Cotton Growing, Institute of

(full name, All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Cotton Growing; SoiuzNIKhl), a scientific center that coordinates research on the technology of cultivating cotton in the USSR. The institute is under the supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture of the USSR. Organized in Tashkent in 1929, it was transferred to the settlement of Akkavak in Tashkent Oblast in 1964.

As of 1977, the institute had departments of economics, planning and coordination of research, and practical application. There are laboratories of crop rotation, agricultural technology, geographic experiments with fertilizers, techniques of irrigation, seed-raising and fiber technology, land reclamation, soil erosion, ecology, irrigation, water regimen, agrochemistry, physiology and biochemistry, defoliation and herbicides, control of wilt, and methodology of experiments and mass analysis. The institute also has sectors of patent supervision, standardization, and editing and publishing. Also part of the institute are the Andizhan, Golodnaia Steppe, and Kashkadar’ia branches and the Bukhara, Pakhtaaral, Samarkand, Surkhandar’ia, Khorezm, Fergana, and Tsentral’naia Meliorativnaia experimental stations.

The Institute of Cotton Growing develops and improves the technology of cotton cultivation for various cotton-growing zones. It also develops new cotton varieties. In 1977 five varieties of cotton developed through selection at the institute were regionalized. Graduate courses are offered both at the institute and by correspondence. Transactions Soiuz NIKhl has been published since 1960. The institute was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1940 and 1969.