Abstract
Fiber length is an important parameter to spin cotton fibers. Cotton breeders work to improve length, and research samples may be machine-harvested, resulting in variability for trash content between samples within the same experiment. There is evidence that trash may directly or indirectly affect the measurement of some fiber quality parameters like micronaire and strength. We hypothesize that the presence of trash particles in the samples may compromise the quality of the length measurement and screening decisions in breeding programs. In order to test this hypothesis, we developed an experiment to evaluate the heritability of length parameters for entries with the same genetic background and affected by the same environment with different trash content. The heritability estimates for samples with high trash content are different from the estimates for samples with native low trash content. Cleaning trashy samples with a laboratory-scale lint cleaner brings the heritability estimates closer to the calculated values for samples with native low trash content. Although the values are similar, the types of variation are not the same. These results indicate that breeders must avoid making decisions based on samples with high trash content. Breeders should base their decisions on samples with low original trash content because this type of sample provides research results closer to the native length distribution.
Highlights
Cotton fiber yield and quality are both essential elements for the producers while fiber quality is of the utmost importance to market the crop and transform it into a textile product
Mean values for fiber quality parameters in the F2 populations were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and honest significant difference (HSD) Tukey’s test at 5% of significance
The trend observed with High Volume Instrument (HVI) holds true with the Advanced Fiber Information System (AFIS) assessment of visible foreign matter (VFM), trash, and dust for the three types of samples
Summary
Cotton fiber yield and quality are both essential elements for the producers while fiber quality is of the utmost importance to market the crop and transform it into a textile product. Farmers need varieties with high yield while spinning mills need cotton with a fiber quality profile that allows them to spin a yarn of a given quality. This demand leads cotton breeders to target the improvement of both fiber yield and quality (Ethridge and Hudson 1998; Stewart et al 2010). 24 Page 2 of 14 spinning industry This myriad of parameters and their interrelationships cannot be summarized as a single variable. Fiber length is essential for ring spinning, but the fibers must be strong and mature, or they will break during processing (Elhawary 2014; Kelly and Hequet 2018)
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