Comparison of Fiber Quality Harvested With Round and Conventional Modules

The introduction to the Australian cotton industry of the John Deere 7760 harvester, with on board module building capacity, has led to the harvester being taken up very quickly. In 2011/12 these harvesters picked approximately 75-80% of the Australian crop, which is the largest percentage of any crop harvested by the John Deere 7760 worldwide. There have been reports from Australian classing facilities that the quality of cotton harvested by the John Deere 7760 is inferior to that harvested by conventional basket harvesters in terms of grade. To assess these claims four fields planted with the two most popular Upland varieties grown in Australia were harvested in the Southern and Central cotton growing areas of Australia utilizing both the new on-board module and conventional basket harvesters. Alternative rows of the test fields were harvested using the two different methods and then ginned concurrently at the same gin. A total of 1811 cotton lint bales were harvested and assessed in this study.  There was no difference in gin turnout between fields or harvest treatments and classing data from High Volume Instruments and classer’s grade, as well as data from the AFIS instrument, showed no practical differences in the quality of the cotton lint bales produced from round or conventional modules.