Cotton Yield Phenotyping

With the continuing depletion to the Oglala Aquifer, the main source of irrigation water for cotton in West Texas, it is important to measure the effects of water on cotton yield. In-season phenotyping work has been a significant part of the cotton physiology research efforts in recent years. We have expanding on this research by linking growth and fiber production traits to overall yield and quality. In this poster, we present a method that increases the accuracy of yield estimates in cotton without requiring mechanical harvest. Twenty cotton cultivars were grown on seven subsurface drip irrigations levels, replicated three times in a split plot design with irrigation as the main plot and cultivar as the split plot. In-season measurements of plant height, canopy temperature, ground cover fraction, and vegetation index were compared with overall yield. End-season measurements include three dimensional remote sensing measurements of boll number and size compared to with mapping of boll distribution to ascertain whether end-of-season measurements can accurately portray yields without mechanical harvest. We discovered a link between our measurements and overall yield and fiber quality.