Modern cotton-harvesting equipment can identify and track modules created during harvest down to the subfield. By combining these data with information such as yield maps and fiber quality results, producers can identify practices, conditions, and varieties that result in increased fiber quality and bale value.
In the new webcast "Cotton Quality Mapping," Jason Ward, assistant professor at North Carolina State University, reports findings of a project that mapped cotton fiber quality to determine how in-field practices can impact the quality of the fiber grown. The initial goal was traceability: how to identify where a given module came from and how that affected fiber quality. But having the traceability solution in place provided the opportunity to determine the sustainability of the fiber and to consider what growers are doing to reduce their environmental impact and to improve soil health.
By understanding how environmental and field practices combine to create good fiber quality, producers can decide how best to maximize profitability. In addition, producers can use the data generated by cotton precision agriculture to provide customers with the information they expect about the cotton they use, such as fiber quality, bale value, and other sustainability metrics.
This 18.5-minute presentation is freely available through the "Focus on Cotton" resource on Grow: Plant Health Exchange. This resource contains more than 100 webcasts, along with presentations from a number of conferences, on a broad range of aspects of cotton crop management: agronomic practices, diseases, harvest and ginning, insects, irrigation, nematodes, precision agriculture, soil health and crop fertility, and weeds. These webcasts are available to readers open access (without a subscription).
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The "Focus on Cotton" homepage also provides access to "Cotton Cultivated," a resource from Cotton Incorporated that helps users quickly find the most current cotton production information available. These and other resources are freely available courtesy of Cotton Incorporated at http://www.planthealthexchange.org/cotton/Pages/default.aspx.