Cotton Plant Mapping: Past, Present, and Future

Box picking has been a valuable tool for estimating boll distribution in cotton for several years.  It consists of plucking cotton bolls from plants and placing them in a grid box based on mainstem node and fruiting position.  However, it has also raised questions of how to deal with issues such as lost cotton, vegetative bolls, plants with apical meristematic damage, rotten bolls, etc.  Another issue is the number of plants or length of plot required for box picking to supply a representative sample of the plot or sampling location.  We report on research we have conducted on box picking, as well as a streamlined box picking system.  We also address decisions that need to be made for the future if a standardized method is to be established.