UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



4fUfiP"^S-TL. 



BULLETIN No. 976 



Contribution from the Bureau of Plant Industry 

 WM. A. TAYLOR, Chief 



J^^^^wTi. 



Washington, D. C. 



PROFESSIONAL PAPER 



January 20, 1922 



CULTURAL EXPERIMENTS WITH GRAIN SORGHUMS 

 IN THE TEXAS PANHANDLE. 



By Benton E. Rothgeb, formerly Assistant Agronomist in Charge of Grain-Sorghum 

 and Broom- Corn Investigations, Office of Cereal Investigations. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 



History of the experiments 1 



Description of the Amarillo Cereal Field 



Station 2 



Location 2 



Physical factors 4 



Experimental methods 11 



Plat experiments 1 1 



Crop rotation 11 



Method of seeding 11 



Methods of obtaining data 11 



Environing conditions 12 



Date-of-Seeding experiments 13 



Dwarf milo 14 



Feterita 17 



Date-of-Seeding experiments — Continued. 



Dawn kafir 



Manchu kaoliang 



Comparative yields in date-of-seeding 



experiments 



Spacing experiments 



Dwarf milo : . . 



Dawn kafir 



Environmental experiments 



Agronomic data ' 



Chemical composition 



Summary : 



Publications on the grain sorghums 



Page. 



IS 

 20 



21 

 23 



30 

 36 

 38 

 39 

 41 

 43 



HISTORY OF THE EXPERIMENTS. 



THE OFFICE OF CEREAL INVESTIGATIONS began experi- 

 ments with ' grain sorghums in the Panhandle of Texas 

 in 1904. These experiments were conducted for three years at 

 Charming, Tex., on the the X I T Ranch. In 1906 the work was 

 transferred to Amarillo, Tex., where it was continued until the close 

 of the season of 1919. Early results indicated that these crops were 

 well adapted to Panhandle conditions, and the demand for informa- 

 tion concerning them resulted in the expansion of the work, begin- 

 ning in 1908. 



The data obtained are the basis of manj^ statements made in 

 numerous popular and scientific publications. 1 The detailed data 

 obtained from the varietal experiments in the 9-year period from 

 1908 to 1916, inclusive, are published, in Department Bulletin No. 

 698. The detailed results from the date-of-seeding, rate-of-seeding, 

 and environmental experiments during the 6-year period from 1914 

 to 1919, inclusive, are presented herein. 



1 A list of these publications is printed at the end of this bulletin. 

 52686°— 21— Bull. 976 1 



