rajpurkar/squad huggingface dataset:
Title: Cotton

The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable textile. The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated from 5000 BC have been excavated in Mexico and the Indus Valley Civilization in Ancient India (modern-day Pakistan and some parts of India). Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered the cost of production that led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today.

Question: What is the most frequent use of cotton?
Answer: fabric

Question: To what date has cotton been dated?
Answer: 5000 BC

Question: Where in India has cotton been found from prehistoric times?
Answer: Indus Valley

Question: In what Central American country has cotton use been found from early times?
Answer: Mexico

Question: What machinery has lead to the  easily made and widespread use of cotton?
Answer: cotton gin
Title: Cotton

The earliest evidence of cotton use in South Asia has been found at the site of Mehrgarh, Pakistan, where cotton threads have been found preserved in copper beads; these finds have been dated to Neolithic (between 6000 and 5000 BCE). Cotton cultivation in the region is dated to the Indus Valley Civilization, which covered parts of modern eastern Pakistan and northwestern India between 3300 and 1300 BCE The Indus cotton industry was well-developed and some methods used in cotton spinning and fabrication continued to be used until the industrialization of India. Between 2000 and 1000 BC cotton became widespread across much of India. For example, it has been found at the site of Hallus in Karnataka dating from around 1000 BC.

Question: Where in Southeast Asia has early use of cotton been discovered?
Answer: Mehrgarh, Pakistan

Question: To what period has cotton been dated in Pakistan?
Answer: Neolithic

Question: When did the Indus Valley Civilization cover parts of India and Pakistan?
Answer: 3300 and 1300 BCE

Question: Until what event did the ancient methods of spinning and fabrication of cotton last?
Answer: industrialization

Question: During what time did cotton become widely used in India?
Answer: 2000 and 1000 BC
Title: Cotton

In Iran (Persia), the history of cotton dates back to the Achaemenid era (5th century BC); however, there are few sources about the planting of cotton in pre-Islamic Iran. The planting of cotton was common in Merv, Ray and Pars of Iran. In Persian poets' poems, especially Ferdowsi's Shahname, there are references to cotton ("panbe" in Persian). Marco Polo (13th century) refers to the major products of Persia, including cotton. John Chardin, a French traveler of the 17th century who visited the Safavid Persia, spoke approvingly of the vast cotton farms of Persia.

Question: Use of cotton in Iran dates back to what period?
Answer: Achaemenid era

Question: When was the Achaemenid era?
Answer: 5th century BC

Question: In what source can references to cotton be found in Iran?
Answer: Persian poets' poems

Question: What 13th century explorer saw cotton in Persia?
Answer: Marco Polo

Question: What Frenchman in the 17th century noted cotton farming in Persia?
Answer: John Chardin
Title: Cotton

Though known since antiquity the commercial growing of cotton in Egypt only started in 1820's, following a Frenchman, by the name of M. Jumel, propositioning the then ruler, Mohamed Ali Pasha, that he could earn a substantial income by growing an extra-long staple Maho (Barbadence) cotton, in Lower Egypt, for the French market. Mohamed Ali Pasha accepted the proposition and granted himself the monopoly on the sale and export of cotton in Egypt; and later dictated cotton should be grown in preference to other crops. By the time of the American Civil war annual exports had reached $16 million (120,000 bales), which rose to $56 million by 1864, primarily due to the loss of the Confederate supply on the world market. Exports continued to grow even after the reintroduction of US cotton, produced now by a paid workforce, and Egyptian exports reached 1.2 million bales a year by 1903.

Question: When did cotton begin to be commercially grown in Egypt?
Answer: 1820's,

Question: What French businessman convinced the ruler of Egypt to grow cotton for the French market?
Answer: M. Jumel

Question: Who was ruler of Egypt in the 1820s?
Answer: Mohamed Ali Pasha

Question: How high had cotton revenues risen by the time of the American Civil War?
Answer: $56 million

Question: How many bales of cotton were produced by Egypt by 1903?
Answer: 1.2 million bales a year
Title: Cotton

During the late medieval period, cotton became known as an imported fiber in northern Europe, without any knowledge of how it was derived, other than that it was a plant. Because Herodotus had written in his Histories, Book III, 106, that in India trees grew in the wild producing wool, it was assumed that the plant was a tree, rather than a shrub. This aspect is retained in the name for cotton in several Germanic languages, such as German Baumwolle, which translates as "tree wool" (Baum means "tree"; Wolle means "wool"). Noting its similarities to wool, people in the region could only imagine that cotton must be produced by plant-borne sheep. John Mandeville, writing in 1350, stated as fact the now-preposterous belief: "There grew there [India] a wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on the endes of its branches. These branches were so pliable that they bent down to allow the lambs to feed when they are hungrie  [sic]." (See Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.) By the end of the 16th century, cotton was cultivated throughout the warmer regions in Asia and the Americas.

Question: In the late medieval period in Europe as what was cotton viewed?
Answer: imported fiber

Question: What 1350 writer stated that cotton was produced by sheep that grew on trees?
Answer: John Mandeville

Question: What ancient writer gave later eras the idea that cotton might be a tree?
Answer: Herodotus

Question: By the end of what century was cotton grown in the Americas and Asia?
Answer: 16th century

Question: Why was it easy for people to believe that cotton grew on sheep that grew in plants?
Answer: similarities to wool
Title: Cotton

India's cotton-processing sector gradually declined during British expansion in India and the establishment of colonial rule during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This was largely due to aggressive colonialist mercantile policies of the British East India Company, which made cotton processing and manufacturing workshops in India uncompetitive. Indian markets were increasingly forced to supply only raw cotton and, by British-imposed law, to purchase manufactured textiles from Britain.[citation needed]

Question: How did British rule effect Indian cotton processing?
Answer: declined

Question: During what centuries did British rule effect Indian cotton production?
Answer: late 18th and early 19th

Question: What British business's policies damaged the Indian cotton industry?
Answer: British East India Company

Question: What cotton products did British law mandate that India was allowed to sell?
Answer: raw cotton

Question: If instead of producing fabrics, where was India forced to purchase cotton products?
Answer: Britain
Title: Cotton

The advent of the Industrial Revolution in Britain provided a great boost to cotton manufacture, as textiles emerged as Britain's leading export. In 1738, Lewis Paul and John Wyatt, of Birmingham, England, patented the roller spinning machine, as well as the flyer-and-bobbin system for drawing cotton to a more even thickness using two sets of rollers that traveled at different speeds. Later, the invention of the James Hargreaves' spinning jenny in 1764, Richard Arkwright's spinning frame in 1769 and Samuel Crompton's spinning mule in 1775 enabled British spinners to produce cotton yarn at much higher rates. From the late 18th century on, the British city of Manchester acquired the nickname "Cottonopolis" due to the cotton industry's omnipresence within the city, and Manchester's role as the heart of the global cotton trade.

Question: What event produced an expansion of the British cotton industry?
Answer: Industrial Revolution

Question: When was a new spinning machine patented that boosted cotton production?
Answer: 1738

Question: What device did James Hargreaves invent?
Answer: spinning jenny

Question: What was Samuel Crompton's invention of 1775?
Answer: spinning mule

Question: Whic British city was nicknamed "Cottonopolis" because of its cotton production?
Answer: Manchester
Title: Cotton

Production capacity in Britain and the United States was improved by the invention of the cotton gin by the American Eli Whitney in 1793. Before the development of cotton gins, the cotton fibers had to be pulled from the seeds tediously by hand. By the late 1700s a number of crude ginning machines had been developed. However, to produce a bale of cotton required over 600 hours of human labor, making large-scale production uneconomical in the United States, even with the use of humans as slave labor. The gin that Whitney manufactured (the Holmes design) reduced the hours down to just a dozen or so per bale. Although Whitney patented his own design for a cotton gin, he manufactured a prior design from Henry Odgen Holmes, for which Holmes filed a patent in 1796. Improving technology and increasing control of world markets allowed British traders to develop a commercial chain in which raw cotton fibers were (at first) purchased from colonial plantations, processed into cotton cloth in the mills of Lancashire, and then exported on British ships to captive colonial markets in West Africa, India, and China (via Shanghai and Hong Kong).

Question: What invention improved the cotton industry in both America and Britain?
Answer: cotton gin

Question: What American invented the cotton gin?
Answer: Eli Whitney

Question: Before the use of the cotton gin, how was cotton separated?
Answer: by hand

Question: What business development did the British use to establish a hold on the global cotton market?
Answer: commercial chain

Question: From what source was raw cotton first bought and later resold?
Answer: colonial markets
Title: Cotton

By the 1840s, India was no longer capable of supplying the vast quantities of cotton fibers needed by mechanized British factories, while shipping bulky, low-price cotton from India to Britain was time-consuming and expensive. This, coupled with the emergence of American cotton as a superior type (due to the longer, stronger fibers of the two domesticated native American species, Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium barbadense), encouraged British traders to purchase cotton from plantations in the United States and plantations in the Caribbean. By the mid-19th century, "King Cotton" had become the backbone of the southern American economy. In the United States, cultivating and harvesting cotton became the leading occupation of slaves.

Question: What was the difference that made American cotton preferred over Indian cotton?
Answer: longer, stronger fibers

Question: In the 1840s, what country could no longer adequately supply the British cotton mills?
Answer: India

Question: Besides buying from the American plantations, where else in the western hemisphere did Britain buy cotton?
Answer: Caribbean

Question: By what time had cotton become prominent in the American economy of the south?
Answer: mid-19th century

Question: What was cotton called in the 19th century?
Answer: King Cotton
Title: Cotton

During the American Civil War, American cotton exports slumped due to a Union blockade on Southern ports, and also because of a strategic decision by the Confederate government to cut exports, hoping to force Britain to recognize the Confederacy or enter the war. This prompted the main purchasers of cotton, Britain and France, to turn to Egyptian cotton. British and French traders invested heavily in cotton plantations. The Egyptian government of Viceroy Isma'il took out substantial loans from European bankers and stock exchanges. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, British and French traders abandoned Egyptian cotton and returned to cheap American exports,[citation needed] sending Egypt into a deficit spiral that led to the country declaring bankruptcy in 1876, a key factor behind Egypt's occupation by the British Empire in 1882.

Question: What action of the Union damaged the southern cotton exports?
Answer: Union blockade

Question: When did the American cotton industry fail?
Answer: American Civil War

Question: To what county's cotton did European buyers turn due to the American Civil War?
Answer: Egyptian

Question: What characteristic of American cotton attracted buyers after the end of the Civil war?
Answer: cheap

Question: What did the abandonment of Egyptian cotton mean to the Egyptian economy?
Answer: bankruptcy
Title: Cotton

Cotton remained a key crop in the Southern economy after emancipation and the end of the Civil War in 1865. Across the South, sharecropping evolved, in which landless black and white farmers worked land owned by others in return for a share of the profits. Some farmers rented the land and bore the production costs themselves. Until mechanical cotton pickers were developed, cotton farmers needed additional labor to hand-pick cotton. Picking cotton was a source of income for families across the South. Rural and small town school systems had split vacations so children could work in the fields during "cotton-picking."

Question: What was the procedure called which involved workers to work for a share of the profits? 
Answer: sharecropping

Question: What difficulty in harvesting cotton required a large labor force?
Answer: hand-pick

Question: Besides adults what segment of the southern US population was involved in the harvesting of cotton?
Answer: children

Question: What function of southern schools was created for children to pick cotton?
Answer: split vacations

Question: What part of the southern population worked as sharecroppers?
Answer: landless
Title: Cotton

Successful cultivation of cotton requires a long frost-free period, plenty of sunshine, and a moderate rainfall, usually from 600 to 1,200 mm (24 to 47 in). Soils usually need to be fairly heavy, although the level of nutrients does not need to be exceptional. In general, these conditions are met within the seasonally dry tropics and subtropics in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, but a large proportion of the cotton grown today is cultivated in areas with less rainfall that obtain the water from irrigation. Production of the crop for a given year usually starts soon after harvesting the preceding autumn. Cotton is naturally a perennial but is grown as an annual to help control pests. Planting time in spring in the Northern hemisphere varies from the beginning of February to the beginning of June. The area of the United States known as the South Plains is the largest contiguous cotton-growing region in the world. While dryland (non-irrigated) cotton is successfully grown in this region, consistent yields are only produced with heavy reliance on irrigation water drawn from the Ogallala Aquifer. Since cotton is somewhat salt and drought tolerant, this makes it an attractive crop for arid and semiarid regions. As water resources get tighter around the world, economies that rely on it face difficulties and conflict, as well as potential environmental problems. For example, improper cropping and irrigation practices have led to desertification in areas of Uzbekistan, where cotton is a major export. In the days of the Soviet Union, the Aral Sea was tapped for agricultural irrigation, largely of cotton, and now salination is widespread.

Question: What is the optimum amount of rainfall for cotton growth?
Answer: 600 to 1,200 mm

Question: In what soil type does cotton prefer to grow ?
Answer: heavy

Question: Why is cotton grown as an annual crop?
Answer: control pests

Question: Where in the US is considered the best place to grow cotton on Earth?
Answer: South Plains

Question: What type of tolerances make cotton an ideal crop for semiarid areas?
Answer: salt and drought
Title: Cotton

Genetically modified (GM) cotton was developed to reduce the heavy reliance on pesticides. The bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) naturally produces a chemical harmful only to a small fraction of insects, most notably the larvae of moths and butterflies, beetles, and flies, and harmless to other forms of life. The gene coding for Bt toxin has been inserted into cotton, causing cotton, called Bt cotton, to produce this natural insecticide in its tissues. In many regions, the main pests in commercial cotton are lepidopteran larvae, which are killed by the Bt protein in the transgenic cotton they eat. This eliminates the need to use large amounts of broad-spectrum insecticides to kill lepidopteran pests (some of which have developed pyrethroid resistance). This spares natural insect predators in the farm ecology and further contributes to noninsecticide pest management.

Question: To stop reliance on what was GM cotton developed?
Answer: pesticides

Question: What form of cotton is GM?
Answer: Genetically modified

Question: What bacterium is used to produced GM cotton?
Answer: Bacillus thuringiensis

Question: What farming pest management technique does the use of GM grown plants promote?
Answer: noninsecticide

Question: What part of the life cycle of moths does Bt toxin effect?
Answer: larvae
Title: Cotton

But Bt cotton is ineffective against many cotton pests, however, such as plant bugs, stink bugs, and aphids; depending on circumstances it may still be desirable to use insecticides against these. A 2006 study done by Cornell researchers, the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy and the Chinese Academy of Science on Bt cotton farming in China found that after seven years these secondary pests that were normally controlled by pesticide had increased, necessitating the use of pesticides at similar levels to non-Bt cotton and causing less profit for farmers because of the extra expense of GM seeds. However, a 2009 study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Stanford University and Rutgers University refuted this. They concluded that the GM cotton effectively controlled bollworm. The secondary pests were mostly miridae (plant bugs) whose increase was related to local temperature and rainfall and only continued to increase in half the villages studied. Moreover, the increase in insecticide use for the control of these secondary insects was far smaller than the reduction in total insecticide use due to Bt cotton adoption. A 2012 Chinese study concluded that Bt cotton halved the use of pesticides and doubled the level of ladybirds, lacewings and spiders. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) said that, worldwide, GM cotton was planted on an area of 25 million hectares in 2011. This was 69% of the worldwide total area planted in cotton.

Question: In what year did a research study find that the use of Bt toxin plants failed to be effective after 7 years?
Answer: 2006

Question: On what did a 2009 study conclude that increased insects were dependent?
Answer: temperature and rainfall

Question: What did a 2012 study suggest  was halved by the use of GM plants?
Answer: pesticides

Question: What did the 2012 study say was doubled by the use of GM cotton?
Answer: ladybirds, lacewings and spiders

Question: How much of the Earth's cotton crops are planted in GM cotton?
Answer: 69%
Title: Cotton

GM cotton acreage in India grew at a rapid rate, increasing from 50,000 hectares in 2002 to 10.6 million hectares in 2011. The total cotton area in India was 12.1 million hectares in 2011, so GM cotton was grown on 88% of the cotton area. This made India the country with the largest area of GM cotton in the world. A long-term study on the economic impacts of Bt cotton in India, published in the Journal PNAS in 2012, showed that Bt cotton has increased yields, profits, and living standards of smallholder farmers. The U.S. GM cotton crop was 4.0 million hectares in 2011 the second largest area in the world, the Chinese GM cotton crop was third largest by area with 3.9 million hectares and Pakistan had the fourth largest GM cotton crop area of 2.6 million hectares in 2011. The initial introduction of GM cotton proved to be a success in Australia – the yields were equivalent to the non-transgenic varieties and the crop used much less pesticide to produce (85% reduction). The subsequent introduction of a second variety of GM cotton led to increases in GM cotton production until 95% of the Australian cotton crop was GM in 2009 making Australia the country with the fifth largest GM cotton crop in the world. Other GM cotton growing countries in 2011 were Argentina, Myanmar, Burkina Faso, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and Costa Rica.

Question: How much area was planted in India in GM cotton in 2011?
Answer: 10.6 million hectares

Question: What was the percentage of GM cotton planted in India in 2011?
Answer: 88%

Question: Waht country has the largest area of GM cotton on Earth?
Answer: India

Question: At what rank does US GM cotton stand in the world?
Answer: second largest

Question: What percentage of Australia's cotton crop was GM in 2009?
Answer: 95%
Title: Cotton

Organic cotton is generally understood as cotton from plants not genetically modified and that is certified to be grown without the use of any synthetic agricultural chemicals, such as fertilizers or pesticides. Its production also promotes and enhances biodiversity and biological cycles. In the United States, organic cotton plantations are required to enforce the National Organic Program (NOP). This institution determines the allowed practices for pest control, growing, fertilizing, and handling of organic crops. As of 2007, 265,517 bales of organic cotton were produced in 24 countries, and worldwide production was growing at a rate of more than 50% per year.

Question: What are organic plants understood to be?
Answer: not genetically modified

Question: Without what are organic plants meant to be grown ? 
Answer: synthetic agricultural chemicals

Question: What is meant by synthetic chemicals?
Answer: fertilizers or pesticides

Question: What group in the US determines the allowed practices in organic agriculture?
Answer: National Organic Program

Question: How much organic cotton was produced worldwide in 2007?
Answer: 265,517 bales
Title: Cotton

Historically, in North America, one of the most economically destructive pests in cotton production has been the boll weevil. Due to the US Department of Agriculture's highly successful Boll Weevil Eradication Program (BWEP), this pest has been eliminated from cotton in most of the United States. This program, along with the introduction of genetically engineered Bt cotton (which contains a bacterial gene that codes for a plant-produced protein that is toxic to a number of pests such as cotton bollworm and pink bollworm), has allowed a reduction in the use of synthetic insecticides.

Question: What insect is the most destructive pest in cotton growing in the US?
Answer: boll weevil

Question: What program has effectively eliminated the boll weevil in the US?
Answer: Boll Weevil Eradication Program

Question: What is the organization that instigated the Boll Weevil Eradication Program?
Answer: US Department of Agriculture

Question: What form of cotton contains a genetically modified gene?
Answer: Bt cotton

Question: On what does the use of Bt cotton reduce reliance?
Answer: synthetic insecticides.