India is largest exporter of the cotton but still it imports extra-long staple cotton as production is not sufficient to cater the needs of Indian Mills. Development of inter-specific hybrids that produce extra-long staple cotton are continued since two decades. Impact of such breeding efforts has not solved the production problem or paucity of such quality cotton in India. We analyzed the date of such trials from 2002-2011 with respect to fiber properties and yield published in All India CoordinatedCotton Improvement Project. The efforts in development of hybrids with fibre length > 38 mm has been achieved that is better than popular hybrid DCH 32 (about 36 mm), but fiber strength improvement was not up to the level of expectations which remainedon par with DCH 32 (26 g/tex). In addition to this micronaire value improvement (around 3.5) was observed which was better than DCH 32 (3.0). The yield improvement was also evident as the high yielding hybrids were contributed over the years. Although improvements are made, the area of such hybrids has been come down due to yield gap between their potential and realized yields. To reduce the extra-long staple cotton imports there should be a special extension efforts for the cultivation of these cottonis essential.
展开▼
