24 BULLETIN 1056, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
would result in a possible reduction of 100,000 tons of cotton seed 
in the annual seeding requirements and a saving of 30,000,000 pounds 
of linters for industrial purposes which are now wasted. 
The cost of delinting should not exceed $5 per ton, while the agri- 
cultural value of the process in promoting quicker and more uniform 
germination with less seed per acre is much greater. 
Delinting also facilitates recleaning and grading by removing the 
surplus lint or fuzz which prevents the seeds from separating readily 
when subjected to an air blast or when passing over a screen. 
The results of recleaning and grading are clean seed, uniform in 
weight, high in viability, and containing a relatively larger quantity 
of stored nutriment necessary to the production of well-developed, 
vigorous, rapid-growing, disease-resisting, and high-producing 
plants. 
It is economy to sack cotton seed as it comes from the recleaninor 
and grading machine. The bags should have a capacity of 100 
pounds net when sewed or tied and be filled to even weight. 
Cotton seed stored in sacks and stacked so as to permit ventilation 
is less subject to heating, which seriously impairs germination. 
All other factors being equal, the value of a given quantity of plant- 
ing cotton seed is in direct proportion to the percentage that will 
grow, and a reliable test of the germination of each lot should be 
made and sales made on this basis. 
The shipping tag should convey the following information to the 
buyer, the farmer: Lot number, variety, where grown, year grown, 
percentage of germination, and date of test. 
The lot number is the key to the identity of any particular lot 
of cotton seed, in connection with which records should be kept re- 
garding the name and address of grower, location of farm, variety, 
and origin of stock seed, as well as data on germination. 
Listing cotton seed by its true variety name and stating more in 
detail the conditions under which it was produced, special prepara- 
tion given it for planting purposes and for market, and the percent- 
age of germination indicates more clearly than present methods its 
actual commercial and agricultural value. 
There is a difference of 2 to 5 pounds in the legal bushel weights 
of upland cotton seed in the various cotton States, and the sale of 
planting cotton seed on the basis of weight instead of measure is 
strongly advocated. 
The registration, inspection, and certification of cotton fields from 
which planting seed is to be selected, by some disinterested agency, 
would go a long way toward providing a commercial supply of cot- 
ton seed pure as to variety and true to type, but this would not rep- 
resent the ultimate in planting cotton seed values unless it is de- 
linted, recleaned and graded, and of the highest practicable percent- 
of germination. 
WASHINGTON : GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1922 
