Cotton-Breeding, Plant Physiology and Agriculture

Abstract

KNOWLEDGE of the cotton crop presents a curious antithesis to that of wheat. The effects of environment are better analysed and understood for cotton than for most crops, but whereas the genetic study of wheat is classical, that of cotton is fragmentary. About cotton we have practically no “useless” genetical information, such as may suddenly turn out to hold the key to commercial difficulties, and a recognition of this ignorance has been a factor in founding the new Empire Cotton Experiment Station in Trinidad. So far, this lack of knowledge has mattered less than it might have done, because Nature provides the cotton - breeder with ample occupation in merely isolating pure lines from the complex population which arises from the small amount of natural crossing in cotton. Thus, almost no successful application of synthetic genetics has been made to cotton, except by Leake.