UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



f BULLETIN No. 271 i 



Contribution from the Bureau of Plant Industry, *> 



Wm. A. Taylor, Chief. SL^'^U'U 



Washington, D. C. PROFESSIONAL PAPER September 28, 1915 



DATES OF EGYPT AND THE SUDAN. 



By S. C. Mason, 

 Arboriculturist, Crop Physiology and Breeding Investigations. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction 1 Description of varieties 17 



Nile Valley dates and their climatic environ- Summary 39 



ments 2 



INTRODUCTION. 



The earliest importation of date offshoots into the United States 

 (a lot of 59 received through correspondence by the Department of 

 Agriculture in July, 1890) was from Egypt. 



Eleven years passed before Mr. David Fairchild, Agricultural 

 Explorer, of the Bureau of Plant Industry, visited Egypt and obtained 

 offshoots of a number of the leading varieties. Small lots of Egyptian 

 offshoots were secured through agents in later years, but the fact 

 remained that the dates of Egypt, of which there are more than 

 7,000,000 trees, were less thoroughly known to American experi- 

 menters than those of any other great date-producing region. In 

 the published lists of Egyptian dates there was much confusion and 

 contradiction, and the identity of some of the more promising of 

 the Egyptain varieties on trial at the Tempe and Mecca date gardens 

 w.i- in doubl . 



These considerations induced the offices of Crop Physiology and 

 Breeding Investigations unci of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduc- 

 tion to combine in sending the writer to Egypt and the Sudan in 

 August, 191.'}. An iiecount of the journey in these countries, from 

 August, Mil:;, to February, 1911, is embodied in another paper, but 

 the descriptions of 22 varieties of dates of Egypt and the Sudan. 

 comprising mosl of the commercial dales of those regions, as well as 

 of several varieties of minor importance not heretofore published, are 

 tbled in 1 1n- bulletin. 



9661:'."— Jiull. 'Sil—ir, 1 



