Fiber Quality of Commercial Roller Ginning

Roller ginning is common practice for the Extra-Long Staple cotton crop (Gossypium barbadense) which is often proclaimed to be amongst the highest quality cotton produced in the world.  Upland cotton has undergone significant improvements in overall fiber quality but could gain quality advantages if subjected to roller ginning instead of saw ginning.  Roller ginned cotton is subjected to HVI classification the same as saw ginned cotton.  However, HVI data is unable to capture all of the quality gains of roller ginning. The textile mills who seek to take advantage of the long length and other desirable qualities of this crop are often seeking information which is not captured by the HVI system.  Over 2,000 commercial bales were randomly sampled from the 2016 crop of roller ginned cotton and subjected to AFIS testing. 20 of the 27 commercial roller gins are represented in this sampling of the ELS crop.  The data was analyzed to get a better understanding of the levels of neps, short fiber, and fineness that exist in the roller ginned crop.