Tracking Cotton Fiber Quality throughout a Stripper Harvester

It is known that cotton fiber quality begins to degrade with the opening of the boll.  Mechanical harvesting processes only aid in this process of fiber degradation.  It is also known that stripper harvested cotton generally has lower fiber quality than picker harvested cotton.  The main objective of this project was to track cotton fiber quality and foreign matter content throughout the harvesting units and conveying/cleaning systems on a brush-roll stripper harvester.  Four locations within the machine were chosen as collection.  Hand harvested cotton will be picked from each replication from in front of the machine for a fifth sample.  These five identified locations include hand-picked field stand cotton, collections from the cross auger trough before it is seen by the cross auger, collections after the cross auger, non-field cleaned cotton and field cleaned cotton.  All of the samples will be ran through an extractor feeder, 16 saw gin stand, and one stage of saw type lint cleaning.  Samples of the cotton lint from each replication were collected and sent to the Fiber and Biopolymer Research Institute in Lubbock, TX.  Each of the replications had both AFIS and HVI fiber tests performed on them. The data collected from this study will give definitive locations of where the highest amount of fiber quality degradation is occurring throughout the stripper harvester.