The Imperial Council of Agricultural Research. Impressions of Cotton Growing in India by a Visitor from Egypt and the Sudan July 1939

The quetion of quality is outside the scope of this paper but in the realm of agricuture it is not unlikely that some of the practices of experienced cultivators in Egypt and the Sudan would be improvements in some parts of India. [...] In Madras too most of the irrigation is on red soils not Black Cotton Soils but when cotton in Madras is grown as in Egypt on soil enriched by the inclusion of a leguminous crop in the rottion and by adequate manuring the resulting yields are of an order coparable with those in Egypt and the Sudan. [...] With cotton and maize the number of plants is relatively low and much of the fertilizer applied broadcast will fall beyond the reach of the roots in the upper soil layers. [...] But there is no need to look ouside India for confirmation of the value of rotation experiments witness the remarkable results in Berar and the Central Provinces from the inclusion of groundnuts in the rotation with cotton and jowar. [...] The change has been dictated by the curtailment of the latter part of the growing season by Pink Boll worm incidence such as occurs in the United Provinces and by the introduction of earlier-maturing varieties.