Location: Cotton Ginning Research
Project Number: 3050-41000-010-078-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2024
End Date: Jun 30, 2026
Objective:
The objective of this cooperative research project is to conduct breeding studies and investigate Upland cotton breeding lines to develop desirable seed traits, fiber quality, and disease resistance.
Approach:
Commercial genetically engineered (GE) cotton has dominated U.S. cotton production for many years. However, U.S. cotton production has experienced several periods of yield stagnant and even decline since the adoption of GE cotton. The current GE biotech traits have had their limitations and have not provided biotech traits to combat drought, salt, and diseases and secondary insect pests. The seed size in many commercial GE cotton has become smaller, raising concerns in ginning, spinning, and exporting. The need of the U.S. cotton producer for cotton cultivars with high-yield, better fiber and seed quality and resistance/tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses has called for solutions from public breeders using intrinsic natural genetic variation through introgression breeding from other cotton species. Through genetic recombination between genes and within genes during the introgression process between Upland and Pima cotton, useful genes and alleles in Pima cotton can be transferred into Upland cotton and novel alleles and allele combinations can be created to produce desirable transgressive segregants. This will lead to development of new cultivars and germplasm lines for significant improvement of cotton yield, fiber and seed quality and stress resistance.
