The Importance and Detection of Cotton Identity Theft: Concepts and Procedures

Traditionally, the task of fiber identification has been restricted to the distinction between fibers of different types (e.g. cotton vs. wool or synthetic fibers). This task has been relatively easy due to the distinguished differences between different fiber types in chemical composition, surface morphology, and physical attributes. These differences made it largely straightforward to identify fibers via common standard techniques such as optical microscopy, SEM, burning, chemical reaction, or basic physical testing. When the task is to identify different varieties of the same fiber type, particularly in natural fibers such as cotton, a great deal of challenge arises from the significant similarity between these varieties particularly in their polymeric structures, and physical characteristics. This challenge is partially overcome as one crosses the major categories of cotton varieties. For example, when fiber identity strictly aims at identifying whether the cotton belongs to U.S. medium staple upland cotton or U.S. extra long staple (ELS) Pima cotton, identification of genetic differences can be very useful in this regard. Genetic differences are based on obtaining cotton DNA markers at the plant stage. However, DNA tests have proved to be inaccurate in many situations due to breading factors that are outside the scope of this paper. In this paper, we introduce some concepts and procedures we will use for cotton identity evaluation using fundamental comparative analysis in which both standard and non-standard measures of fiber characteristics are used.