ARS | Publication request: COMPARISON OF STICKY COTTON INDICES AND SUGAR COMPOSITION.

Submitted to: Journal of Cotton Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: December 15, 2005
Publication Date: June 1, 2006
Citation: Bancroft, J.S., Hutmacher, R., Godfrey, L., Goodell, P., Mcguire, M.R., Funk, P.A., Wright, S. 2006. Comparison of sticky cotton indices and sugar composition. Journal of Cotton Science. 10:97-104.

Interpretive Summary: Cotton is one of the world’s most important fiber crops. However, if lint is exposed in the field to sugary deposits, called honeydew left by insects the resulting sticky cotton lint contaminates equipment in gins and textile mills and requires costly stoppages for cleaning and repair. Currently, there is no internationally accepted standard method for measuring stickiness. There are two devices in use that measure the relative stickiness of lint. Each device provides data on the number and size of sticky spots but no studies have been done to determine if the measurements are related to each other. To obtain a range of lint samples with different levels of contamination, field experiments were conducted at seven fields over 3 years. A total of 325 samples of cotton lint were tested for stickiness with the Lintronics Fiber Contamination Tester (LFCT) and the High Speed Stickiness Detector (H2SD). The strongest relationships were between large spots on the H2SD and intermediate sized spots on the LFCT. More complex relationships among 25 statistical response variables show relationships between aphid and whitefly sugars as measured by chemical tests and overall stickiness. The information presented in the manuscript should be useful to scientists conducting work to reduce honeydew contamination and personnel involved in ginning, spinning and marketing lint.

Technical Abstract: Sticky cotton lint contaminates equipment in gins and textile mills and requires costly stoppages for cleaning and repair. The primary source is sugars from insect honeydew. This paper assesses variable relationships among two sources of stickiness measurement and sugar composition analysis. Experimental trials were conducted at seven fields over 3 years. A total of 724 samples of cotton lint were tested for stickiness with the Lintronics Fiber Contamination Tester (LFCT) and the High Speed Stickiness Detector (H2SD). Sugar composition testing was also performed on a subset of 325 samples. Coefficients of variation, correlations, and factor analyses were used to identify relationships among the variables reported from each source of test data. The strongest correlations were between large spots on the H2SD and intermediate sized spots on the LFCT. More complex relationships among variables and the use of factor coefficients to create indices of stickiness are discussed.