Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

Much of the initial breeding work held at CICA was thus to adapt the Barberton varieties to local ecological conditions by using selections of the U4 strain aiming to enhance productivity and the technological properties of the fiber. A constant selection effort was also necessary to avoid the degeneration of the cultivated varieties resulting from crossings with previously planted varieties by insect pollination or poor seed isolation, in order to keep the good properties of yield, fiber quality, and resistance to diseases or plagues. Each of the regional experiment stations, controlled by the Research Center, performed essays testing different selected seeds under different conditions of fertilization, pest control, sowing timing or rotation of cultures. Until the CICA began to operate in Mozambique, the U4 seeds were imported from South Africa, with two big deliveries in 1937 and 1940.[113] In subsequent years, in addition to imports from Barbeton as well as from Namulonge in Uganda, CICA breeders released their own strains from selections of the British Empire ones, produced in the several experimental fields operated throughout the territory. Beginning with a overwhelming presence of the U4 in the 1940s, maps produced by CICA researchers for the different regions showed in subsequent years many other strains: A618, A637, A455, SB8, and so on, each of them chosen in function of different local conditions. The big challenge was to increase the length of the fiber produced without diminishing resistance to Jassid. In fact, maps were also produced that showed the quality of the fiber produced in each area of cotton cultivation as measured by their micronaire index (air permeability of compressed cotton fibers which indicates fiber fineness and maturity).[114] The entire territory was now translated in function of the regional variations of the technological index of the cotton fiber.

Not only did Quintanilha supervise everyone’s work; his cytogenetic knowledge wasn’t wasted. He assembled a major collection of cotton varieties in the facilities of CICA and surveyed the Mozambican countryside in search for more.[115] He was able to demonstrate that, contrary to what botanists had believed, not only was there no presence of the species Gossypium arboreum in the territory; in addition, the plants of the Gossypium herbaceum species were different from the ones in central Africa, having originated from exchanges with the Indian subcontinent much before the arrival of the Portuguese. Most of the spontaneous growing cotton plants in Mozambique were Gossypium barbadense or Gossypium hirsutum, meaning they originated from the Americas, and were thus brought by the Portuguese from Brazil. More than a historical interest, the importance of such taxonomic work was to guide the hybridization work of the breeding department. The main issue is that Old World species (G. arboreum and G. herbaceum) are diploid (n = 13) whereas the New World ones (G. barbadense and G. hirsutum) are tetraploid (n = 26). Breeders trying to tap on the diversity of both worlds when crossing cottons native from the Americas with those from northern India would thus produce sterile triploid descendants. And here is where Quintanilha’s cytogenetics came in. By treating chemically cells with colchinine it was possible to duplicate the number of chromosomes and convert the sterile triploid into hexaploid.[116] This was then crossed with a cultivated Asian variety (diploid), producing a fertile tetraploid, which could finally be crossed with an American variety of the G. hirsutum (tetraploid) species. By producing a collection of hexaploids—tools for the crossing of varieties with different number of chromosomes—Quintanilha thus offered CICA breeders the possibility of tapping into the whole range of species across the different continents. By 1958 there were more than 1,500 of these interspecies crossings under observations in the network of CICA experimental fields.[117]

^{Figure 5.8 Cotton varieties in various regions of Mozambique, 1966–67.}

^{(Relatórios, Actividade do Instituto do Algodão de Moçambique nos anos de 1962 a 1967, Arquivo Instituto Português de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento MU/PP/20)}