The Bureau of Chemistry and the Farmer.--In the Bureau's annual report, Dr. Henry G. Knight, Chief, tells how his department is helping the farmer to grow and utilize his crops more efficiently and with greater profit. The department has developed a method of hastening color development in oranges which has recently increased the value of the Florida orange crop by making the fruit ready for an earlier market Research by the Bureau has resulted in the establishment of the citrus byproducts industry. Citrus growers now garner millions of dollars from culls which arc used to make lemon oil, orange oil, and citrus pectin. It has been demonstrated that sweet potato starch satisfactorily replaces imported potato starch in cotton mills and now several sweet potato starch mills are under construction in the South.
Distillation tests conducted at Ames, Iowa, showed that yields of Ioo pounds of acetic acid per ton from pecan shells and I3o pounds per ton from corn cobs could be obtained. Preliminary experiments have tested possibility of supplying the farmers of the prairie states with cheaper fuel by briquetting the farm waste. A farm unit pilot plant for the production of fuel gas has been installed to show whether it is practical to convert farm wastes and house sewage into light and heat for farm homes.
Bureau chemists have synthesized a derivative of rotenone, dehydrorotenone, which is more stable in sunlight. If the product can be developed as a satisfactory substitute for lead arsenate, it will save the apple growers the considerable expense of removing arsenic and lead residues from the fruit.
C.