Sugar Cane ' on Ths ' Andrews Estate " Empangeni

The types of soil at the experiment station, ,as would be the case at anyone site, form only a small proportion '0£ the very variable' types and conditions -to be fo'&hd 'growing considerable areas of cane in the sugar belt.. Experiments have th~refore been established. on private estates in co-operation with the, occupiers where certain typical soils were well represented, and where other circumstances appeared favourable for the carrying on of such experiments. This co-operative work requires special keenness and intelligence on the part of the planter providing the land, as well as thoroughness and perseverance to carry out the experiments properly totheir con-. elusion, '.The land as well as being thoroughly representative of an important type of soil s.hould be as uniform as possible in order that adjacent blocks of cane under different treatments should be comparable; it should also be reasonably convenie~t of access for the periodical visits from the expertmerit station staff or from interested fellow planters. It is also necessary that the cane should be transportable to the mill in small tramway units and not direct by S.A.R. (Government railways), so that . the cane from small plots-can be weighed sep~rately and accurately. This implies also .the effective-cooperation of the factory both in the weighing and if possible in the analysis of the different cane. lots. These conditions are not ' easy to fulfil simultaneously and several series of co-operative field experiments have been begun only to be abandoned for one reason or another. , Furthermore, <not nearly-as .many of these experiments have been established as the local industry needs owing to the general lack of financial resources at the disposal of-the experiment, station; so that many of our important soils and special agricultural conditions are still entirely without -experirnents to study their particular problems, and the experiment station staff are able to supply only the most general information regarding them. Thus we have no field experiments as yet in those wind-blown sandv soils characteristic of many estates close to the sea, or the richer sandstone soils represented in the D mhlali district and elsewhere. We have .10 experiments under irrigation, although this v:.ry important and increasing practice brings, its own separate problems. There.are, also very few green manure orfallowing experiments, or, experiments on methods ~f,/~~,oon cul~ivation, and there areas yet no systematic comparative field trials of variety canes apart from those at the ex-, perirnent station. There. are, it ,is true; a number of very small quarantine plots in various districts, but noneof these are large enough to give us reliable estimates ofyieJds of other varieties of canecornpared with Uba. Those .sugar producing countries'<which are among the most.successful to-day, suchas Java and Hawaii, have attained their pre-eminent position largely as a result of their rseientific-experimental work; and, in' these countriesco-operative field experiments are num bered literally by the hundred. In fact, nearly all the larger estates in these countries maintain elaborate field experiments in close collaboration with the staff of their general experiment station. " , We have obtained some specially interesting and instructiveresults in 'this countrv from our co-operative experiments on the Andrews Estate at Em;pangenj. Here we have very favourable conditions {or experimental work in a uniform rich red loan;y soil typical of 'a large area of sugar cane lands 111 Zululand... ','., ' ",' , ,