BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY AND PLANT QUARANTINE 
49 
COOPERATIVE PROGRAM IN MEXICO UNDER WAY 
Control operations against the pink bollworm in the United States 
have been affected by natural spread from heavily infested areas in 
Mexico. To offset this condition increased funds were provided for 
the cooperative control work in Mexico, and during the past year 
Bureau personnel have been working with Mexican agricultural offi- 
cials, agricultural agencies, and individual farmers to effect improve- 
ments in administration of control procedure, particularly in in- 
terior areas. Emphasis continues to be placed on efficient regulatory 
and control practices in border areas, which it is believed compare 
favorably with those in adjacent areas in the United States. 
Farmers in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Mexico destroyed stalks 
on 125,000 acres promptly after harvest, 
PROGRAMS IN THE VARIOUS REGULATED AREAS 
For the second consecutive season rains prevented completion of 
field clean-up in the lower Rio Grande Valley and permitted con- 
siderable carry-over of pink bollworms. This resulted in a substantial 
increase in infestation in 1943. Farmers destroyed stalks on 218,618 
acres, and Bureau funds were used to pile and burn stalks in heavily 
infested fields. The Bureau, in cooperation with Texas authorities, 
grubbed cotton sprouts from 46,764 acres, in order to establish and 
maintain a starvation period for the pink bollworm subsequent to 
destruction of stalks by farmers. To reduce the number of overwinter- 
ing larvae, the State of Texas has set September 15 as the date for the 
completion of stalk destruction. This is 15 days earlier than in pre- 
vious years. 
In 1943 no effort was made in the Big Bend of Texas to shorten 
the growing season through regulation of the planting date, but in 
1944 the Texas State Department of Agriculture sought to reduce 
the number of generations of the bollworm through regulations in- 
volving delayed planting. 
In Louisiana an intensive clean-up program w T as carried out with 
Bureau funds on 2,115 heavily infested acres in Cameron Parish, 
and the area then was designated as a noncotton zone by State au- 
thorities. The State required farmers in two additional parishes to 
destroy stalks at their own expense. 
A total of 876,166' bales of cotton were ginned at 555 gins in the 
regulated areas of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. In all, 352,934 
tons of seed were sterilized, 327,980 tons of seed were processed at the 
49 designated oil mills, and 484,076 bales of lint and 8,252 bales of 
linters were compressed at 11 plants. A total of 11,022 bales of Mexican 
linters were fumigated. The supervision of these treatments re- 
quired 2,360 inspections of processing plants. 
In southern Texas about 2,100 small lots of quarantined products 
were intercepted through examination of trucks and 24,600 pick sacks 
that were being carried out of the regulated area by transient workers. 
ERADICATION OF WILD COTTON 
Eradication of wild cotton from southern Florida was handicapped 
in some sections because of labor shortages. Infestation continues to 
be held at a low level in the greatly reduced number of plants, thus 
