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Select Plant (1) ------>| 500 |
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Select Plant (1)

After Webber, _Year-book, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture_, 1902.

Improvement of Cotton by Seed Selection.

From the seeds of the selected plant of the 1st year about 500 plants
can be raised in the next year. One plant is selected again from these
500, and the general crop of seed is used to sow about five acres for
the 3rd year, from which seed is obtained for the general crop in the
4th year. One special plant is selected each year from the 500 raised
from the previous season's test plant, and in four years' time the
progeny of this plant constitutes the "general crop." The practice may
be modified according to the size of estate by selecting more than one
plant each year, but the principle remains unaltered. This method is in
actual use by growers of Sea Island cotton in America and in the islands
off the coast of S. Carolina; the greatest care is taken to enhance the
quality of the lint, which has been gradually improved in length,
fineness and silkiness. Mr Webber, in summing up, says, "When Sea Island
cotton was first introduced into the United States from the West Indies,
it was a perennial plant, unsuited to the duration of the season of the
latitude of the Sea Islands of S. Carolina; but, through the selection
of seed from early maturing individual plants, the cotton has been
rendered much earlier, until now it is thoroughly adapted to the
existing conditions. The fibre has increased in length from about 1-3/4
to 2-1/2 in., and the plants have at the same time been increased in
productiveness. The custom of carefully selecting the seed has grown
with the industry and may be said to be inseparable from it. It is only
by such careful and continuous selection that the staple of these
high-bred strains can be kept up to its present superiority, and