Impact of Experimental Gins on Fiber Quality Parameters

Stripper harvested cotton usually contains approximately 6 to 8 times higher levels of trash than machine picked cotton. Ginning in stripper areas should be made more efficient at removing the trash particles while preserving fiber quality. Fiber breakage is a concern at two junctures: the saw gins and the lint cleaners, especially when fibers are immature. This may result in excess fiber breakage and modifying fiber length distributions. In this experiment 5 lines from the Regional Breeders Testing Network and 3 commercial cultivars were planted with three replications (25 feet single row per entry) in a RCBD. The plots were subjected to 3 different water rates on subsurface drip irrigation from low, medium and high in order to obtain a range of fiber maturity. The lint obtained was ginned on laboratory gins and the fiber quality was evaluated. For each plot, 250 grams of seed cotton was sampled to be ginned on two new 20 saw gin, an older 20 saw gin, custom made roller gin and 25 grams was ginned using hand manually.  Fiber breakage was evaluated from the AFIS fiber length distributions.