Exotic Germplasm Introgression Effects on Adapted Cotton Genotypes

Our research is mainly focused on the objective of determining the effect of exotic germplasm introgression on agronomic and fiber properties of adapted cotton varieties. For this we studied eight populations derived by crossing two exotic parents (TX 245 and TX 1419) with four locally adapted cultivars (FM966, PM1218, Deltapearl and SG747). In each population we generated five combinations with 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent exotic germplasm. The design we followed was RCBD with two replications, two locations (one at Tallassee, AL and Florence, SC) and two years (2009 and 2010). The agronomic traits we studied were days to first flower, lodging, seed cotton yield, lint percent, boll mass, number of bolls per plant, seeds per boll and lint mass per seed. Fiber properties measured were fiber length, fiber strength, fiber fineness, fiber elongation, shot fiber content and uniformity index. Results indicate that some traits are positively influenced over adapted parent whereas most did not show any significant improvement. We concluded that there was very limited improvement in agronomic and fiber properties with exotic germplasm introgression but there is tremendous opportunity for improvement because of the improved genetic base. Some improved lines were identified within each population which could be promising material for further studies.