Growing Cotton by Transplantation

/^ROP seeds are generally sown directly. It is possible, ^-* however, first to raise seedlings in a nursery or seedbed, and then transplant them in the field. This practice, known since early days, is usually applied with vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, etc.). In the case of farm crops, tobacco is traditionally grown by transplanting, and in many countries this practice is applied successfully also to rice. Transplanting maize, potatoes, mangolds, and sugar beets gave striking results in Bavaria (12). In Canada, yield increases of 36 and 52% have been obtained with transplanted sugar beets (1). Transplanting is mostly indicated where crop seeds are small or delicate, the growing season is relatively short, or for obtaining higher yield and earlier crops. Attempts to apply the above method to cotton seem to have started in Turkestan as early as 1912; but they were mostly unsuccessful, since 70% or more of the seedlings perished during the process. Tests were resumed after 1924, and the results proved so encouraging that in the 1930s cotton was reported to be grown by the new method on thousands of hectares. According to a number of Russian workers, the benefits of transplanted cotton are many. Plants flower and mature their crop much earlier than cotton sown directly, and this is of exceptional importance in the case of late varieties, such as the Egyptians (5, 6, 11). With regard to the technique used, 4 to 5 seeds were sown in small paper pots; the pots were placed in seed-beds, heated by a 30-cm. layer of decomposing farm manure. The method was described in detail in a number of earlier Russian publications (2, 4, 13, 14). In recent years, there is hardly any reference to growing cotton by transplantation. In the Soviet Union, developments after the war are unknown (the method does not seem to be now applied commercially). But according to personal information, transplanting is practiced on a considerable scale in China, and in North Korea, where the growing period is rather short. In the Belgian Congo, tests in 1948 showed that transplanting results in reduced yields (7). In Peru, the practice was new in 1959, but its many advantages over direct sowing were recognized (9). Then, as mentioned in a short note by Kulkarni et al. (8), transplanting of long staple cotton in India met with success (survival about 95%). The new method is applied commercially on a few hundred hectares in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, where a simple moulding contraption is used for making soil cubes. The present paper deals with experimental work, carried out in Greece, for studying growing cotton by transplanting as compared to direct seeding.