Page:Report of the Puerto Rico Experiment Station (IA CAT31294391015).pdf/5

 The experiment station of the University of Puerto Rico and the Federal station continued close cooperation on agricultural problems. Exchange of information through conferences of the directors and members of the staffs of the two stations resulted in a well-coordinated program. Cooperative tomato- and papaya-improvement projects between the two stations were continued during the year. The Federal station provided office and laboratory space and land facilities for the experimental work with coffee being conducted at Mayagüez by the Insular station.

The College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts of the University of Puerto Rico, located adjacent to the station, frequently utilized the station facilities in field demonstrations to students.

The extension service of the University of Puerto Rico cooperated with the station in the distribution of plant material, particularly tropical kudzu, bamboo, and USDA-34 sweet corn.

The Federal and Insular Forest Services made labor available to the station for the propagation and distribution of newly introduced bamboos. Several thousand offsets of bamboo were planted on watersheds throughout the mountainous areas of Puerto Rico. The Forest Service continued to make areas of land available at Toro Negro, Maricao, and Guanica, for the testing of various tropical plants and for the cinchona program of the station.

The Puerto Rican Industrial Development Company continued cooperation with the station through the distribution and sale of cured bamboo culms for industrial purposes.

The station cooperated with several bureaus and agencies of the Department. Three hundred and fifty-three lots of cottonseed collected from Guatemala, southern Mexico, and other foreign countries by the Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering, and the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station were grown at four locations. These semiwild tropical and subtropical cottons, potential germ plasm for improving domestic varieties, flower and fruit only under greenhouse conditions in the United States, while under Puerto Rican conditions they flower and fruit profusely. J. O. Ware of the Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering, and T. R. Richmond and C. F. Lewis of the Texas station visited the Federal station during the fruiting season to observe and catalog the growth and fruiting characteristics of these cottons. A rubber investigation project was continued in cooperation with the Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering. Office and laboratory space and land facilities were provided for the Soil Conservation Service, United States Department of Agriculture.

Office and laboratory space and land facilities were furnished the new Research and Marketing Act Soil Erosion Control Project. Office space was also made available to the Farmers Home Administration and to Insular and Federal plant quarantine inspectors of the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine.

The Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering, through its Division of Plant Exploration and Introduction, made available to the station a large quantity of plant material on an exchange basis.

Considerable quantities of planting material were sent to the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations for introduction and testing at