52 
BULLETIN 1260, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
110 da}-s: and the better strains of it are dependable grain producers. 
Its field of greatest usefulness is in west-central Kansas. Pink kafir 
requires too long a growing season for the extreme western part of 
Kansas, and in the eastern and southern parts of the State Blackhuli 
kafir ordinarily outyields it except on the poorer soils, where Pink 
is more likely to mature a grain crop than Blackhuli. 
Blackhuli kafir. or Standard Blackhuli, as it is often called, is the 
best-known grain-sorghum variety. It requires approximately 120 
days to mature and therefore is at home only in the eastern part of 
the sorghum belt, where the rainfall is more abundant and the 
growing season longer. Blackhuli kafir can not compete with the 
earlier maturing Pink and Dwarf Blackhuli kafirs west of the ninety- 
eighth meridian. East of this line it will no doubt continue to be 
the leading kafir variety. The Blackhuli kafir which is now being 
m a mw w mm 
Fig. 16.— A field of Dwarf kafir at Lawton, Okla. 
grown in this region is not, however, so tall as it was formerly, because 
farmers appreciate the greater ease of harvesting a crop where the 
stalks are 6 feet or less in height. 
Dwarf kafir and Dwarf Blackhuli kafir are names applied to small 
early-maturing strains of Blackhuli. Under the climatic conditions 
existing in the southern Great Plains Dwarf kafir matures in 105 to 
110 days at a height of 44 to 50 inches. Its short growing season 
permits its successful production at higher altitudes and in regions 
of lower rainfall than the Blackhuli or Pink kafirs. (Fig. 16.) 
Dawn kafir is a strain of Dwarf kafir developed by C. R. Ball, of the 
Office of Cereal Investigations, at the field station at Amarillo, Tex., 
and is the leading variety of Dwarf kafir. 
Sunrise kafir is an early sweet-stemmed strain of Blackhuli selected 
by C. P. Ball from the same hybrid parent that produced Dawn 
