Impact of cotton fiber maturity for cotton processing

Textile mills have high demand for good quality cotton; to fulfill the demand of textile mill it is very important to produce better quality cotton within short growing season. Breeders are working to produce good quality cotton with long fiber length that will process more efficiently. The impact of cotton fiber maturity on fiber and yarn quality was compared among 64 bales, from eight different locations in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Different levels of fiber maturity were obtained by using picker and stripper harvesters. Picked cotton was termed as cotton with truncated distribution and was more mature than stripped cotton. Stripped cotton was termed as cotton with non-truncated distribution. Fiber quality parameters were determined with HVI and AFIS and yarn quality was determined using the Uster Tensorapid 3 and Uster Tester 3. The result showed that HVI and AFIS measurements together are needed to predict yarn quality accurately. Most of the parameters from AFIS and HVI measurements were better for cotton with truncated distribution than for cotton with non-truncated distribution. Yarn data analyses showed that yarn properties were better for cotton with truncated distribution than for cotton with non-truncated distribution. Overall, the results showed that mature cottons have better fiber quality as well as yarn quality. The result obtained from processing showed that there was increase in maturity ratio, fineness, mean length by number, and UQL along the processing, while there was a decrease in immature fiber content, short fiber content, visible foreign matter, seed coat nep count, and nep count. Combed slivers have longer fiber length and high maturity ratio, whereas, noil which were removed during combing were short and have low maturity ratio. Therefore, the common hypothesis of independence between length and maturity within-sample and constant linear density among length groups needs to be revisited. One hundred and ninety six commercial bales were sampled and tested on the Cottonscope and HVI to create a set of three reference cottons to track the possible day-to-day drift of the instrument. A very good relationship was found between HVI and Cottonscope micronaire. Among the 196 bales, 5 cotton bales are being used as standards to calibrate the Cottonscope and to document the day-to-day variations of the instrument. The result also found that samples should be blended prior to testing and that 6 to 9 replications per sample are needed. The comparison between AFIS and Cottonscope data for maturity ratio and fineness of samples collected along the processing steps showed that AFIS maturity ratio and fineness increased along the processing, whereas, Cottonscope showed that maturity ratio and fineness decreased during carding which is unexpected. Using the Cottonscope at this stage is quite challenging. Testing speed of Cottonscope is not good as expected. Therefore, its use as a high throughput instrument for fast phenotyping of breeder samples is probably not possible. But it could be an excellent tool for research on fiber development, as there will be no problem with the Cottonscope for small and weak samples.