Characterizations of a distributional parameter that evaluates contents of immature fibers within and among cotton samples

Authors: Kim, Hee-Jin; Delhom, Christopher - Chris; Liu, Yongliang; JONES, DON - Cotton, Inc; XU, BUGAO - University Of North Texas

Submitted to: Cellulose
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/5/2021
Publication Date: 8/12/2021
Citation: Kim, H.J., Delhom, C.D., Liu, Y., Jones, D.C., Xu, B. 2021. Characterizations of a distributional parameter that evaluates contents of immature fibers within and among cotton samples. Cellulose. 28:9023-9038. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-021-04135-8.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-021-04135-8

Interpretive Summary: Fiber maturity or degree of cotton fiber wall thickness is a major property determining fiber quality, yield, and textile performance. A cotton fiber sample is generally composed a mixture of mature, immature, and severely immature fibers. The severely immature fibers in the cotton samples tend to be broken or entangled easily, and cause troubles during mechanical processes of cotton fibers. The contents of the severely immature fibers in a cotton sample can be theoretically determined by microscopic analyses of cross-sectioned fibers. However, neither textile industry nor cotton breeding program can afford practically to do the microscopic method due to its laborious and time-consuming process. Cottonscope has been developed recently as an alternative for efficiently measuring fiber maturity from a cotton sample. In this study, we characterized a distributional parameter, immature fiber content (IFC) measured by Cottonscope. Our results showed that the Cottonscope enabled measuring IFC as accurately as the microscopic method. It also showed that the Cottonscope IFC enabled measuring fiber maturity variations within and among fiber samples more sensitively than mean maturity traits. As results, we concluded that the Cottonscope IFC method measuring fiber maturity efficiently, accurately, and sensitively may be useful for evaluating the within-sample maturity variation and classifying fiber maturity from an experimental cotton populations.

Technical Abstract: Thickness of the cotton fiber wall or fiber maturity is an important property affecting fiber quality, yield, and textile performance. Due to the complexity of within-sample variation, mean values alone are not sufficient to evaluate cotton maturity. Distribution parameters should be examined for accurately evaluating cotton maturity variations. However, maturity distributions have not been well characterized due to difficulties of determining maturity from individual fibers with lengthy and laborious microscopic techniques. Cottonscope was developed recently as an alternative for efficiently measuring fiber maturity by analyzing 20,000 snippets from a cotton sample. Thus, we investigated if Cottonscope enabled assessing maturity distributions as accurately as the microscopic method. A Cottonscope maturity distribution was closer to a normal distribution curve as compared with the microscopic method. By comparing maturity with chemical compositions of developing fibers at various stages, we proposed a new maturity threshold of the severely immature fibers produced at a developmental stage before active cellulose biosynthesis. Using this threshold, we compared a distributional parameter, immature fiber content (IFC) measured by both Cottonscope and microscopic methods from cotton reference materials composed of a broad maturity range. The Cottonscope IFC was strongly and significantly correlated with the IFC measured by the microscopic method. It also enabled distinguishing maturity variations from the cotton samples sharing an identical mean maturity. Therefore, the distributional parameter may be used to improve the ways of evaluating the within-sample maturity variation and detecting differences of fiber maturity distributions among cotton samples.