Professor Wyndham Dunstan, F.R.S., in his Report on the Agricultural Resources of Cyprus (1905), referred to the successful trials made with "Sea Island," "Peterkin," "Truitt's Big Boll," "Culpepper Big Boll," and "Allen's Long Staple." Since then other varieties have been tried by the Agricultural Department, and while "Allen's" and "Truitt's" have continued to do well, good results have been obtained from "Triumph" and "Durango," both of which are early kinds and are therefore very suitable to the Island. A report by the Imperial Institute on samples of "Allen's Improved," "Mebane's Early Triumph" and "Sakellaridis" cottons grown experimentally in Cyprus in 1915 will be found in the Bulletin of the Imperial Institute (vol. xv. 1917, p. 298).
Owing to fear of locusts, late sowing (about May-June) became rather general. This is a dangerous practice as the bolls ripen late and much cotton is spoilt by the early autumn rains. It is mostly sown broadcast or in trenches; on irrigated land it is mostly sown in the ridges, but the older practice of sowing broadcast still, unfortunately, continues.
"Dry" cotton is usually sown either on land which can be irrigated by a river when in flood, or in "livadhia" or low-lying lands which retain their moisture a long time. In the former case the seed is sown about March-April, while the soil is still damp from rain water or from river overflow. It is generally expected that when the young plants are fairly established a second irrigation from flood-water may occur. In the "livadhia" the seed is sown later. "Wet" cotton is watered about every fortnight.
The crop begins to be collected in mid-September and continues up till the end of October. "Dry" cotton is rarely manured; "wet" cotton occasionally. The use of chemical manures is coming into practice. There are several ginning machines in the Island, but baling by hydraulic presses is done almost exclusively at Larnaca.
In the Island the cotton seed is used for sowing and for feeding cattle. The exports of cotton seed have been:
| Year. | Quantity. | Value. |
| Cwts. | £ | |
| 1909 | 2,708 | 769 |
| 1910 | 3,066 | 970 |
| 1911 | 3,245 | 830 |
| 1912 | 15,874 | 4,535 |
| 1913 | 13,933 | 3,750 |
The exports represent about three-fourths of the total production.
There should be a good opening for machinery for extracting the oil.
The cotton is locally graded into (1) best, (2) medium, and (3) poor, all being American varieties. The first quality is the "wet" or irrigated cotton. The second quality is grown mostly in the Messaoria plain and at Dali, Nisou, Potamia, Kythrea, where it is partly irrigated by river floods. The third quality is "dry" and comes principally from the Karpas. On the Marseilles market the second quality has a value 3 to 4 per cent., and the third quality 8 to 10 per cent. less than the first quality. The first quality ranks in price at Marseilles on about a level with American cotton.