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ARS Home » Southeast Area » New Orleans, Louisiana » Southern Regional Research Center » Cotton Structure and Quality Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #151628
Title: QUANTITATION OF FIBER QUALITY AND THE COTTON PRODUCTION-PROCESSING INTERFACE: A PHYSIOLOGIST'S PERSPECTIVE

Author
item BRADOW, JUDITH - RETIRED - SRRC
item Davidonis, Gayle

Submitted to: Journal of Cotton Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/6/1999
Publication Date: 2/1/2000
Citation: BRADOW, J.M., DAVIDONIS, G.H. QUANTITATION OF FIBER QUALITY AND THE COTTON PRODUCTION-PROCESSING INTERFACE: A PHYSIOLOGIST'S PERSPECTIVE. JOURNAL OF COTTON SCIENCE. 2000. 4:34-64.

Interpretive Summary: Two simple words, fiber quality, mean quite different things to cotton growers and to cotton processors. Growers think about those words when the USDA classing office tells them that bale averages for one or more of the fiber properties fall into the price-discount (penalty) range. Processors think about those words when they incur costly disruptions in yarn-spinning processes and when significant defects appear in yarn and finished fabrics because the fiber-property ranges in the bale laydown mix fell outside the non-penalty ranges.

Technical Abstract: Traditionally, ideal cotton (Gossypium ssp.) Fibers are said to be as white as snow, as strong as steel, as fine as silk and as long as wool. It is difficult to incorporate these specifications favored by cotton processors into a breeding program or to set them as quantitative goals for cotton producers. Since the early 1980's in the USA, the USDA-AMS cotton classing offices have become the primary connection for fiber quality between cotton producers and processors. The high volumes of cotton passing through the classing offices every year have forced workers there to make compromises for the sake of speed and productivity, and to develop rapid, semiautomatic classing techniques that have blurred some fiber-quality definitions in ways that may favor one industry segment over another. The vertical integration of the U.S. cotton industry from field to fabric depends on efficient use and cooperative refinement of the existing line of communication. Fiber-classing technologies now in use and under development and evaluation allow quantitation of fiber properties, application of improved standards for end-product quality, and most importantly, creaton of a fiber quality language and a system of fiber-quality measurements that can be meaningful and useful to producers and processors alike.