Acid-delinted cottonseeds with greater than 90-percent germination were soaked 

 for 24 hours in water, drained, and then allowed to germinate for an additional 36 

 hours at 85% F. The germinated seeds were then blanched for 3 minutes and frozen. 

 After removal from the freezer, the seeds were thawed and fed into the revolving 

 rollers, which squeezed the meats from the hulls. The large rollers caused little 

 damage to the immature cotyledons and left the empty seed hulls intact. 



After the seeds had been processed through the rollers, they were placed in a 

 large container filled with water. Most of the empty hulls floated because of the air 

 trapped inside them, but the meats and a few hulls sank to the bottom of the container. 

 The floating hulls were poured off and discarded. The settled material was placed on 

 a large 4-mesh wire screen with an 80-mesh screen placed beneath it. By means of a 

 strong jet of water, the flexible meats were washed through the top screen and deposit- 

 ed on the bottom screen. The rigid hulls were retained on the top screen. This 

 method provided an approximate 96-percent separation of meats and hulls. 



The meats, mixed with two parts of distilled water, were ground to a fine puree 

 in a Waring Blendor. The 4 percent of hulls that remained in the mixture were re- 

 moved by allowing the pieces to settle to the bottom of the blender and decanting the 

 puree. 



By this method, 35 to 40 pounds of seeds per hour could be dehulled as compared 

 with less than 1 pound per hour by the hand-squeezing method. 



Adult- Diet Press 



7/ o/ 



Research by Vanderzant and Davich- and Everett and Earle^^ showed that the 



female weevil deposited more eggs on a curved surface than on a flat one. In their 

 work, Vanderzant and Davich constructed plastic and aluminum molds for casting 

 small diet cylinders. When the agar-base medium was poured by hand into the molds, 

 it solidified as it cooled. The diet cylinders, removed from the molds, were later 

 impaled on toothpicks and dipped into melted paraffin. This process, although satis- 

 factory for maintaining small numbers of weevils, was too time consuming for the mass 

 rearing of large numbers of weevils. Several other processes were therefore investi- 

 gated. 



At the State College laboratory, several attempts were made to reduce the time 

 involved in preparing the diet cylinders. At first, the hot diet was poured into 4-foot 

 lengths of glass tubing 8 mm. in diameter and allowed to cool. The cylinder thus 

 formed was forced out of the tube and cut into 4- inch lengths. Each length was then 

 coated with melted paraffin. Although this method took less time than the one with the 

 individual molds, it was still too time consuming for mass rearing. 



']_/ See footnote 6 . 



8/ Everett, T, R. , and Ear le, N. W. Unpublished report. 



