Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1920-07-03
DR. kEARNEY TELLS
 OF PIMA. COTTON


 The greatest single farm crop in Arizona is Egyptian cotton. Over 100000 acres of this kind of cotton will be grown in Arizona this year, which should at present prices bring to the state for cotton and cotton pro ducts more than $75,00O,000.
 Dr. T. H. Kearney of the Bureau of Plant Industry of the U. s. Depart ment of Agriculture is often spoken of as the originator of the variety of Egyptian now grown in Arizona and known as Pima. Dr. Kearney' for his distinguished services was recently given a doctors degree from the Uni versity of Arizona. At a meeting of the staff of the College of Agricul- ture of the University Dr. kearney was called upon to give brief story of Pima cotton and his remarks fol- low:
 Q q would like to emphasize the fact that this work of developing the Pima variety of cotton is not my work but rather 'our work for it has been CO., operative in large degree and is fine illustration of the cooperative princi- pie. The Department of Agriculture began about 25 years ago to introduce types of Egyptian cotton into this country. The exact origin of the Egyptian cotton is not thoroughly un. derstood, but it appeared about 1860 and is probably result of hybridiza- tion that took place after the intro duction to Egypt of American types of cotton. Different varieties of this type have appeared from time to time.
 Up to the time of the organization of the Egyptian Department of Agri- culture, the management of the sup ply of planting seed had been most lax and haphazard; no care had been exercised to keep varieties pure. All the cotton in one locality was ginned in one gin without the precaution be- ing taken to clean it out after each run and so the seed had become pretty thoroughly mixed. In addition to this, no care was taken to prevent cross pollenization in the field, and hybrids were constantly appearing. In recent years the Egyptian authorities have endeavored to correst this situation, and efforts are being made to keep the different varieties pure.
 "The Department of Agriculture of the United States began 25 or 30 years ago to introduce seed of Egyptian va rieties of cotton and in 1901 the Ari- zona Experimental Station tested seed in their experimental work. In 1902 l went to Egypt to see the cotton growing there and l came back to the United States convinced that Arizona was the place to grow the Egyptian type, rather than the southern states farther east. We commenced breed ing work at Yuma with the Nit Afifi variety and after five years, had made some progress in getting earlier ripen- ing and more productive plants with out marked departure from the origin al. In 1907, however,by selection of a superior and very distinct individual, we obtained the variety known as Yuma. With this variety we did con- siderable work; we induced some com mercial manufacturers to make tests of the fiber and were convinced that we had something better than had been grown in this country up to that time. In 1912 there were 300 or 400 acres of this variety of cotton grown in the Salt River Valley. We secured pretty good yields and got a pretty good price for it, as prices were at that time.
 "But to go back little: in 1910 at the Sacaton Station there appeared an individual that gave rise to a new variety that was quite different from the parent Yuma variety. As soon as the value of the new type was recog- nized we took care to isolate it. The method of protecting this variety and keeping the seed pure is to personally inspect the fields of farmers who have been supplied with the best seed pos sible to obtain, and select an area of about 50 acres that shows up to be the best. This area is carefully rogued by