The harvesting campaign has started in the southernmost region of Turkmenistan - a valley of Murgab. First thousand tons of raw cotton of 360 promised tons by cotton pickers this year was delivered to reception points of Mary region. Despite high tech cotton harvesters, the harvest season was started by as always, by masters of hand picking. Just few opened bolls on each plant accelerated their coming out into the fields. This first cotton from bush is considered the most valuable to textile workers. Its fibre is much more complete, than at the subsequent gathering and is much purer. In hand picking cotton pickers of Mary also see other advantages - minimum crop losses and less harvesting terms. The income of tenant farmers for produce of such valuable raw material is also higher.

62 and a half thousand hectares of land are put under machine harvesting. Because of hot summer in the south of the country the crop grows ripe slightly earlier, than earlier years. Therefore they plan to start defoliation already in early September. And in the middle of next month in fields cotton-harvesting machines will appear. 467 units of machinery will be used. Most of them are cotton harvesting machines of John Deere. While with transportation of cotton the tractor park of cotton reception points copes well. If necessary, when the crop stream will grow, multi-tonnage cotton carrying vehicles will also join transportation. Cotton processing workers have beforehand taken care of preparation of cotton reception points, having equipped all of them with the necessary technologies and machinery. All 35 bases both those are located at factories and in the remote cotton files, are already ready to accept the cotton harvest gathered by Mary cotton pickers for long storage.

Vladimir FROLOV