Ginning Up New Ideas to Improve Cotton Production

Derek Whitelock is the Research Leader at the Southwest Cotton Ginning Research Laboratory in Las Cruces, NM. Whitelock and his research partners are developing new technologies in cotton production to give U.S. cotton growers an edge on the competition.

Welcome Dr. Whitelock to Under the Microscope: 

UM: What are the biggest challenges today facing U.S. cotton growers?

DW: From talking with our cotton producers, they have a number of major challenges, including competition from man-made fiber, other country growths, and high input prices. Over the past 3 years, cost of production has been higher than market revenue.  In addition, unpredictable weather, droughts, and water issues continue to be problematic in many states.  

UM: What is needed in the cotton growing industry to meet current and future challenges?

DW: Long term, we need to find a way to reduce the cost of producing and processing cotton so that we can lower the price of our products and make them more widely available, including for our younger consumers. One of the most pressing challenges is the prevention of fires at the gin and module yard and in cotton bale storage and cottonseed storage. Continued research is needed to detect and prevent fires.  Contamination due to the plastic wrap utilized by modern harvest equipment is another pressing concern.  The use of AI and machine learning is driving this research forward to better identify plastic contamination during the ginning process.  

More research is also needed to understand the interaction between variety-specific fiber quality characteristics, fiber moisture, seed moisture, ginning rate, and machine processing sequences with the goal of identifying the fastest ginning rate that gives minimal fiber damage.  Ultimately, an automated control system would decrease the costs of ginning while increasing the value of the final product to the farmer. 

A researcher analyzes cotton.

UM: How are ARS researchers meeting these challenges?

DW: Engagement and communication with cotton stakeholders is key. At the ARS Ginning Labs in Las Cruces, Lubbock, and Stoneville, researchers are engaging stakeholders continually and listening to their concerns to ensure our research is addressing real cotton industry problems. We then adjust our priorities if needed to work on these issues and collaborate with the cotton industry and other researchers to design and conduct research to find solutions. 

UM: What innovations are you employing to improve cotton fiber quality?

DW: At the ARS Ginning Labs, we were asked by the cotton industry to see if we could reduce fiber damage, thus improve quality of cotton leaving the cotton gin. We reviewed 20 years of past cotton ginning research and found that the lint cleaner, a cleaning operation after the fiber is removed from the seed, causes most of the fiber damage at the cotton gin. So, our research on that machine has produced two project paths. One focuses on current and new technologies that feed the fiber to the cleaning mechanism in a manner that greatly reduces fiber breakage, which also increases fiber length and length uniformity. Fiber length uniformity is important because high-capacity air jet spinning requires very uniform fibers, like polyester that can be produced with almost 100% uniformity. Improving uniformity of cotton fiber makes it more competitive with polyester fiber.

The second focuses on completely reimaging the lint cleaner. Since their invention, lint cleaners have used saws and grid bars to clean cotton fiber. We are working on a pneumatic lint cleaner that uses blasts of air and cleaning slot surfaces to clean fiber. Results so far have shown that the pneumatic lint cleaner can clean cotton fiber as well as conventional lint cleaners, but with much less fiber damage. The big challenge is figuring out how to transfer the technique to a continuous, high-capacity machine for the commercial cotton gin.

UM: A big cost eater in cotton production is reducing contaminants that lower the value of cotton products. What research are we doing to lower the cost for reducing contaminants during the production process?

DW: The most important cotton contaminant today is plastic films and fibers. An industry changing innovation was the round module, which reduced labor, better protected cotton in field after harvest and at the gin, and provided for easier and longer distance transport from field to gin. However, the harvester that builds the onboard round module also wraps that module in plastic, and that plastic has become the number one contamination issue for the cotton industry. 

At the ARS Ginning Labs, we have been working on several fronts to reduce plastic contamination from entering the cotton bale. One project involved developing a more than 90% effective, low-cost, prototype system that detected and ejected colored-plastic contamination from cotton stream before ginning. The technology was moved from prototype to industry in only 2 years and received a Federal Laboratory Consortium Excellence in Technology Transfer award. This development has the potential to help U.S. cotton reclaim its “contamination-free” reputation and regain its premium for millions of export bales. 

Another exciting project is developing a machine that exploits differences in physical properties between cotton and plastics to separate them. In an out-of-the-box effort, we found that plastics that typically contaminate cotton melt at about 250°F, much lower than the scorching temperature of cotton. We designed a prototype with heated, rotating cylinders, through which contaminated cotton passes in a serpentine manner. When plastic touches the hot cylinders, it sticks and is rotated out of the cotton stream to be removed by metal knives on the backside, while the cotton passes through. The next challenge is figuring out how to remove the hot sticky plastic from the scraping knife, which is like trying to remove gum from the bottom of a shoe. 

UM: Are you using AI technology to help with the plastic problems?

DW: Yes. At the ARS Ginning Labs researchers are investigating vision systems to detect plastic contamination at the main ginning machine and at the feeder where cotton is fed into the gin plant to alert gin facility operators to plastic contamination issues. They are also using AI with drone mounted vision detection systems to detect contamination in the cotton field so that it can be removed to prevent it from being taken in with the cotton during harvest. 

UM: How are we developing new uses and improved techniques for adding value to cotton byproducts?

DW: The ARS Ginning Labs’ research goal is to turn gin “trash” into gin “treasure”. Our current research focuses on improving current practices in composting byproducts for more optimal and sustainable soil amendment and mulch production; optimizing the circularity of gin byproducts from livestock feed to manure as a soil amendment for cotton production and back to byproducts; converting cotton byproducts to biochar for use as a soil amendment for cotton and other food crops; and utilizing cotton stalks, which are high in hemicellulose, to produce xylose, an important sugar substitute for those suffering from diabetes and a feedstock for biofuels. 

UM: How will ARS research benefit the U.S. cotton industry in the future?

DW: Our research is focused on solving problems directly impacting the cotton industry, and pivoting to address new problems as they emerge. We expect to bring many of the projects discussed above to maturity and deliver solutions to mitigate plastic contamination to help U.S. cotton regain its reputation as “contamination free”, to improve U.S. cotton quality so that it is competitive with man-made fibers, and to develop cotton byproducts into valuable feedstocks for biofuels and biobased products. 

Other emerging areas where the ARS Ginning Labs are working to benefit U.S. cotton are to demonstrate to the cotton industry the value of utilizing and expanding collection of data in the integrated cotton production and processing system; looking for solutions to long-term issues like seed-coat fragments that are usually minor but, when in years when certain variables like weather align, become major issues; and looking for new ways to detect and mitigate spontaneous fires in seed piles that cause millions of dollars in lost seed and structural damage. 

To learn more about ARS’s cotton research, see below:

ARS technology helps cotton industry eliminate plastic contamination

ARS scientists are producing new strains of cotton that offer both quality and abundance.

Cleaner cotton means greater profits

VIPR System from ARS Could Save $750M per Year and Restore U.S. Reputation for Clean Cotton