UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
DEPARTMENT BULLETIN No. 1260 
Washington, D. C. 
August, 1924 
SORGHUM EXPERIMENTS ON THE GREAT PLAINS. 
By H. X. Vinall, Agronomist in Charge of Sorghum Investigations, and R. E. 
Getty and A. B. Cron, Assistant Agronomists, Office of Forage-Crop Investi- 
gations, in cooperation with the Office of Cereal Investigations, Bureau of Plant 
Industry. 
CONTENTS. 
Page. 
The sorghum belt 1 
Climatic features 2 
Soils 7 
Native vegetation 9 
Sorghum groups an d varieties 10 
Experimental methods .11 
Preservation of soil uniformity 11 
Plat technique . 11 
Seeding methods 11 
Harvesting methods 12 
Methods of obtaining data 12 
Varietal experiments 13 
Hays, Kans 13 
Chillicothe, Tex 23 
Amarillo, Tex 32 
Varietal experiments — Continued. 
Woodward, Okla 38 
Lawton, Okla 40 
Dalhart, Tex 41 
Big Spring, Tex 43 
Tucumcari, N. Mex 44 
Northern Great Plains 46 
■ Summary of varietal experiments 47 
Cultural experiments 07 
Date of seeding 57 
Rate of seeding in rows 72 
Rate of seeding in close drills or broadcast. 83 
Time of cutting sorghum for hay 85 
Literature cited 88 
THE SORGHUM BELT. 
Most of the experiments described in this bulletin were conducted 
in the southern half of the Great Plains, a section which, on account 
of its climatic characteristics, has become the sorghum belt of the 
United States. Reports of the Bureau of the Census show that a 
very large percentage of our sorghum acreage is in the western parts 
of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas and the eastern portions of Colorado 
and New Mexico. (Fig. 1.) The sorghums can also be grown suc- 
cessfully in the Corn Belt and in the Southeastern States, especially 
for forage. Other crops are relatively more profitable in these sec- 
tions, however, and the sorghums are, therefore, grown to only a 
limited extent outside the Great Plains area. 
The experimental work with sorghums at the United States Depart- 
ment of Agriculture field stations and the State substations has pro- 
gressed through cooperation with the Offices of Dry-Land Agricul- 
ture Investigations and Cereal Investigations of the Bureau of Plant 
Industry and the State experiment stations in Kansas and Texas. 
The location of the field stations where the experimental data were 
obtained is indicated in Figure 2. This map is adapted from Figure 
1 on page 485 of the Journal of Agricultural Research, Volume XIV 
(2). 1 Very few experiments were carried on at the stations north of 
1 The serial numbers (italic) in parentheses refer to "Literature cited," at the end of this bulletin. 
90483— 24 1 1 
