6 
H. G. Hastings & Co., Seedsmen, Atlanta, Georgia. 
OUR COTTON SEED BREEDING WORK 
Our illustration below shows our Mr. D. S. Starr making his seed 
selections from individual or single plants. You will note the small 
bags to the left of the roadw^ay. Each bag contains such bolls from 
single plants as Mr. Starr has selected as being worth saving. 
All through the growing season Mr. Starr has been watching the 
breeding and test fields closely, practically eating and sleeping with 
the crop from the time the seed is planted until the last lock is 
picked. 
Every time he sees a plant giving evidence of marked superiority 
he tags that plant. These marked plants are examined frequently 
and notes made. These field observations and records are kept up 
until the seed cotton is picked. The picking from these specially 
marked plants is all done by Mr. Starr himself and no cotton picker 
is allowed in these breeding fields until Mr. Starr completes his 
special selection work. 
In all real work in plant-breeding we have to start with single 
plants. As stated on a previous page, 2,000 to 2,500 of these plant 
selections are made each year from hundreds of thousands of plants. 
After the field selection has been made of superior plants, the real 
inside, expert work begins. 
The product of each of these plants is handled separately. The 
seed cotton from each is ginned separately on a special gin made for 
this purpose. The seed cotton from each plant is examined care- 
fully to note the number of motes to boll, length of lint and strength 
of fibre and many other special points. Before ginning, the seed 
cotton from each plant is carefully weighed ; the lint and seed are 
again weighed separately after ginning, on delicate scales made for 
this purpose. 
On the previous page we have stated that, so far as cotton is con- 
cerned, any system of seed selection dependent on theeyealone won’t 
produce desired results. The best evidence of this is the fact that 
each year Mr. Starr throws out four-fifths of the selections he makes. 
In his ginning tests alone he found the lint per cent, varying all 
the way from 17 per cent., about ,1-6, to 49 per cent., almost even 
weight of seed and lint. These tests also show that in strength of 
lint some plants produce lint fully twice as strong as others. The 
difference in number of motes to the boll often makes a difference 
of 10 to 15 per cent, in the yield per acre. Resistance to disease often 
makes as high as 25 per cent, difference in the yield. 
MR. D. S. STARR, OUR EXPERT COTTON BREEDER, 
^ We want to give our Mr. Starr full credit for the splendid work he 
m doing in his special department of breeding work. He is a native 
Georgian, a man who took special training in this particular wbrk 
before he took it up as a life profession. He is thoroughly in love 
with his work and tarries to it an enthusiasm that is necessary when 
one does best work and gets results that count, it is the earnest, 
enthusiastic workers that accomplish things in this world, and Mr. 
Starr is one of those earnest men that put their lives into their 
work. The results he has accomplished in the years engaged in this 
work have been more than we expected. 
There are “thief” cotton plants that steal in other ways than 
shown on page 8, and it is part of Mr. Starr’s work to detect them 
in our crops. 
The question of lint per cent, is most important. Cotton growers 
MAKING SELECTIONS ON THE HASTINGS EARM 
want lint. We find that lint per cent, varies from 17 to 49 per cent. 
Among cotton growers is the old calculation that “cotton thirds it- 
self.” Some plants do a great deal better than this, others much 
worse. It’s a part of Mr. Starr’s work to get rid of these low per 
cent, plants so that nothing but paying plants in every respect are 
in our customers’ fields. 
Without going into detail as to all the points of this breeding 
work on cotton, there are four things we are constantly working on. 
increase in yield per acre ; increase in per cent, of lint to seed ; 
better quality, length and strength of staple; and last, but not least, 
the production of varieties of cotton that enable our friends in boll 
weevil districts to make paying cotton crops in spite of the weevil. 
We have no boll weevil in Georgia as yet, but we are ready fop him 
when he comes, for we have varieties now making a bale per acre 
and over in the worst boll woovll districts Qt LoTjisiaDft, Texas and 
Mississippi. 
