Rapid Cotton Maturity and Fineness Measurements Using the COTTONSCOPE®

Maturity and fineness are important cotton fiber properties.  Maturity and fineness can be measured directly, but most of these methods are slow and/or require expensive laboratory equipment.  Hence, micronaire is often used to indirectly indicate the fiber’s maturity and fineness.  Much interest has been shown in new and rapid measurements of fiber maturity and fineness.  The Cottonscope is a new instrument for fiber maturity and fineness, using a longitudinal measurement of weighted fiber snippets in water by polarized light microscopy and image analysis. A program was implemented to determine the capabilities of the Cottonscope to measure cotton fiber maturity and fineness.  The measurement takes less than 5 minutes per sample and is easy to perform.  Major operational impacts on the Cottonscope results were determined.  Good agreement was observed for maturity and fineness between the Cottonscope and the cross-section image analysis-microscopy technique.  Comparisons to other fiber maturity and fineness measurements and operational influences for both routine ginned cotton and breeder/variety cottons will be discussed.