Lu Feng, Craig Bednarz, and Cory Mills. Texas Tech University, P.O.Box 42122, Lubbock, TX 79409
Irrigation and plant density influence cotton yield and quality. As the basic components, within-boll quality and yield can be employed to identify the effects of these two factors. This study is constructed to determine how yield, quality and within-boll yield components are changed with various levels of irrigation and plant densities through comparing the effect of boll position as well as seed position on yield and fiber quality. Field experiments with two cotton cultivars were arranged in a split-split-plot design with irrigation rate (high and low) as the main plot, variety (FM9063 and ST4554) as the subplot, and plant density (32, 50, 80K) as the subsubplot in 2006. Plants from each plot were hand harvested from 10 feet of a row. Various parameters including locule number, seed number, mote number, seed mass, seed surface area and fiber properties for each seed position within bolls at first sympodial positions of nodes 9 and 14 were determined. Yield data was collected by plant mapping.
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