Cotton cultivation

•  Period of growth 6 to 8 months

• Land prepared by ploughing in late winter or early spring
• Cotton seeds are planted 0.5 - 4 inch deep in rows, 3-4 feet
apart in the prepared land
• Plants push up   through the surface of soil in about 8-12 days
•  Full height reaches in 40 to 50 days (Bush like)
•  Flowering takes another 30 days
•  The opened flower:
first day:  yellowish white
second day: turn into pink
third day: the petals of flower fall down
• Large cotton bolls get matured in 40 to 50 days
• Cotton fibres grow in   these  bolls  which are usually
divided in 3-5 sections (compartments), each
compartment contains 7-9 seeds  and each seed is
covered with 10000- 20000 fibres.
• The fibre wall is then thickened by daily growth of rings
of cellulose deposited on the inside. This deposit narrows
the hollow space called lumen. If the deposition is
stopped for some reasons before the fibre matures, it is
called immature fibre and has thin wall and wide lumen
• When the Cotton bolls are ripe, they burst, exposing  a
soft mass of cotton fibres. At this stage the plant juices
present in the lumen either go into the cotton seed or
evaporate - the fibre structure collapses in different
directions at different places - fibre may twist one way
for a few turns then reverse - formation of convolution
(twist may vary from 150 to 300 per inch)
Spinnability is due to these twists.
• As a fibre grows, the wall or the solid portion of the fibre
increases until the lumen becomes very small.
• Dead or immature fibres don't have twists
 Picking
Before picking is done, the opened out bolls are allowed to remain in
sunlight for drying out the water content and for further continuation of
blooming up (get nourishment). The bolls, however, are also contaminated
with fine dust, sand, broken leaves etc. owing to the wind blow.

• Hand picking: better quality......preferred in India

- Machines not available easily
- Small growing fields
- Cheap labour

• Mechanical picking: high productivity

- Cannot be selective in choosing only ripe cotton
- Large amount of trash and other foreign matter get associated
- The crop does not get mature at the same time