Adaptation of Indigenous Cotton Accessions for Mechanical Picking in Pakistan

The availability of manual laborers for picking cotton is reducing in coming years in Pakistan, therefore cotton farmers are facing a serious problem for timely harvesting. This delay in picking leads to deterioration of fibre quality and late plantation of subsequent crop(s). Under this scenario, mechanical picking is the best option, like developed cotton growing countries have already adapted. Non-availability of such cotton accessions, mechanical pickers and unawareness of production technologies are the preliminary issues to achieve this target. Keeping in view, an advanced cotton accession “PB-896” developed by the University of Agriculture Faisalabad, it was planted for two years on various locations in the country for adaptability trials. This strain completes 50% boll opening in 95-105 days with good and fluffy opening that provides an opportunity to make it suitable for mechanical picking. In addition, dynamics of Stance^® and mepiquat chloride were also studied on this strain under various sowing methods. From the comparisons, it was found that bed sown cotton under various levels of plant growth regulator with application of defoliant produced maximum yield as compared to ridge and flat planting techniques. It was also suggested that sensor based cotton pickers manufactured by John Deere and Case IH are difficult to introduce in Pakistan due to their complex manufacturing, operating mechanisms and are expensive in nature while cotton pickers developed by Özen İS are suitable for Pakistani cotton farming community due to their low cost and simple in nature. In addition, maintenance and reverse engineering of these machines are easy for local industry.