Environmental and Regional Effects on Fiber Quality of Cotton Cultivated in Greece

Abstract

The cultivation of cotton and in particular the quality characteristics of the fiber are mainly influenced by the growing conditions, the cultivation techniques as well as the climatic changes of the environment. The current study aimed to quantify the impact of environment, season, and their interactions on cotton fiber quality of different areas where cotton is grown in Greece. A large-scale database was created, consisting of more than 20,000 fiber samples from cotton fields of the four major cotton-producing regions of Greece (Thrace, Macedonia, Central Greece, and Thessaly) during 2016–2020, in order to evaluate thirteen fiber quality traits that were divided into four groups (fiber maturity, fiber length, color, and trash traits). The results of this work demonstrated that the effect of the environment and the interaction of the environment with year (season), were the important source of variance for almost all the qualitative characteristics studied. Regional climatic characteristics such as temperature, humidity and rainfall also significantly affected to a greater or lesser extent all quality characteristics. In conclusion, the different cultivation regions, in the broader sense of an environment that incorporates both climatic and management parameters, show stability in terms of the studied groups of quality parameters. This stability is independent of the high or low performance of the group features.