Introducing Cottonscope: A Rapid and Precise Measurement of Cotton Fibre Maturity Based On SiroMat

This paper introduces Cottonscope, a new instrument for the measurement of cotton maturity based on the Siromat instrument developed by CSIRO from Geelong Australia. There have been several papers presented on Siromat at previous conferences. The instrument combines the technology of Siromat and the OFDA instrument.

OFDA (Optical based fibre diameter analyser, www.ofda.com) is the most common instrument worldwide for the measurement of animal fibre diameter (wool, cashmere, alpaca etc). Measurement time for 2000 fibres is less than 30 seconds.

The maturity measurement derives from the repeatable colour measurement of fibre snippets dispersed on a glass slide. The principle is an automation of ASTM 1442.