The Twentieth Century


China and Japan, were tested in Florida in 1903. They produced
thirty thousand pounds of seed for distribution. Wild rice from
the Sudan, the 100-day rices from Japan, and eleven varieties
from India-a total of forty-six new varieties-were introduced
for other tests in 1907. Patna types of rice for soup making,
brought from British India and Burma for tests in 1931, proved
too slow maturing for the United States. The plants were killed
by frost while in bloom.
 SORGHUMS
 When growers became convinced that they could not success-
fully refine sugar from the sorghums, they began experimenting
with the plants for use as grain and forage crops for the West.
Feterita, hegari, and Sudan grass, all from Africa, became valu-
able additions to the other grain and grass sorghums. After the
first seed of feterita received in 1901 failed to secure any results,
a second introduction was made for the Office of Forage Crops
in November, 1906, from V. F. Naggiar, a merchant of Alex-
andria, Egypt. Seed from this lot, grown in 1907 at the Chilli-
cothe (Texas) Experiment Station, spread the crop throughout
the Southwest. Ten years later the annual value of the crop
was estimated at $16 million.
 Hegari, another important grain sorghum from the Sudan,
was received from Khartoum in March, 1908, and planted that
spring at Chillicothe. From these seed A. B. Connor of the
Texas Agricultural Experiment Station made a selection in 1910
which was the forerunner of practically all the hegari grown
in the United States. In the spring of 1916 the Bureau of Plant
Industry distributed 17,000 pounds of seed.
 Sudan grass arrived in the spring of 1909 from R. Hewison,
Director of Agriculture and Land, for the Anglo-Egyptian
Government at Khartoum. It came to the United States as the
result of a search instituted through the Office of Seed and
Plant Introduction by C. V. Piper, agrostologist. Seeds of many
related forms intermediate between Johnson grass and sorghum
were received, but only two-Sudan and Tunis grasses-proved
of value. Sudan grass gained recognition immediately as a dry-
land hay crop for the South and Southwest. Within six years
enough of it was being grown to meet all demands for seed.
Sudan grass is now a familiar hay and grazing crop worth millions
of dollars annually and is grown over almost the entire nation.