ACALA COTTON IN CALIFORNIA 5 
department representatives. It yielded about a bale to the acre, 
which gave about 4 tons of Acala seed. The field attracted favor- 
able attention, and the grower sold the seed for 5 cents a pound, 
most of it going to neighboring ranchers for planting in 1920. 
A part of the seed produced in 1919 by this 8-aere planting in the 
San Joaquin Valley was used in 1920 in making the first Acala 
planting in the Coachella Valley. This planting gave exceptionally 
good results. One of the two small fields at the date garden, con- 
taining 0.42 of an acre, had been in alfalfa, while the other, meas- 
uring 0.66 of an acre, was raw desert soil, except for a volunteer 
wheat stubble turned under. The alfalfa block, in spite of a poor 
stand, produced 1.360 pounds of seed cotton, and the new land 
gave 2,919 pounds, yields that are equivalent to 3,238 and 4,423 
pounds per acre, respectively. The ginned cotton weighed 1,377 
pounds, or at the rate of 2.07 bales of lint per acre for the alfalfa 
land and 2.83 bales for the new land. 
INTEREST AROUSED BY THE ACALA PLANTING 
The remarkable showing made by the small Acala planting at 
the United States Experiment Date Garden in 1920 attracted a 
great deal of attention throughout the Coachella Valley and even 
in other districts of the Southwest (pis. 1, 2, and 3). Hundreds of 
visitors came to the date garden to see the Acala cotton fields, and 
newspaper reports placed the yields at 4, 5, and even 6 bales to the 
acre. Though there was no basis for such exaggerated reports, 
nevertheless the production of cotton at the rate of over 2y 2 bales 
to the acre was sufficiently rare to attract attention. In order to 
correct the erroneous reports, the department issued a press notice 
May 6, 1921, giving the actual results of the Coachella Valley 
planting and describing what could really be expected of the Acala 
variety. 
The season of 1920 was unusually hot, the mean maximum temper- 
ature for July being 109.4° F. instead of the usual 102 or 103° F., 
and as a result of the heavy yields obtained under such extreme 
conditions the date garden received many requests from Coachella 
Valley cotton growers for the seed produced. 
It was recognized also by some of the growers that the compara- 
tively small area of the Coachella Valley and its complete isolation 
from other cotton-growing districts by many miles of desert and 
mountains would constitute decided advantages in the produc- 
tion of pure planting seed for shipment to other cotton regions. 
Department representatives suggested that, if the production of 
planting seed was to be undertaken, it was essential for the Coa- 
chella Valley to become a single-variety cotton-growing community 
and that every effort should be directed to complete elimination 
of other varieties. Since cross-pollination in the field by insects is 
frequent and the seed is often mixed to the extent of 25 per cent 
with modern gin equipment, it was pointed out that only by the 
community limiting itself to the production of one variety of cot- 
ton could pure seed be produced in large quantities and with ade- 
quate assurance of maintaining the supply over a period of years. 
