Impacts on Cotton Fiber Quality from Multi-Pickings Compared to Traditional Single Pass Harvest Systems

Traditional harvest systems, picker or stripper, make one, rarely two passes when harvesting the cotton crop. Producers generally will apply harvest aids at approximately sixty percent open bolls, and weather depending harvest the crop seven to twenty one days later.  The objective of this project is to evaluate and quantify the adverse fiber quality conditions on lower fruiting positions that develop earlier in the growing season while awaiting upper positioned bolls to become harvestable.  Over the course of five weeks, newly open bolls were hand harvested twice a week from a single forty five foot row from each plot.  From each plot, seed cotton samples were separated by each fruiting position.  From each individual hand picking event, harvested nodes were noted.  This was performed to improve knowledge of fiber quality by fruiting position.  Two rows in every plot were treated with traditional harvest practices, defoliated at sixty percent and harvested by a picker at two locations and a stripper at one location.  Samples from both the hand harvesting events and the machine harvesters were graded by HVI and AFIS to compare fiber qualities.