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ARS Home » Southeast Area » New Orleans, Louisiana » Southern Regional Research Center » Cotton Quality and Innovation Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #422885
Research Project: Enhancing the Quality and Sustainability of Cotton Fiber and Textiles

Location: Cotton Quality and Innovation Research

Title: Cotton Fiber Micronaire and Relations to Fiber HVI and AFIS Qualities between Deltapine® and PhytoGen Upland Varieties

Author
item Liu, Yongliang
item Hinchliffe, Doug

Submitted to: FIBERS
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/28/2025
Publication Date: 4/3/2025
Citation: Liu, Y., Hinchliffe, D.J. 2025. Cotton Fiber Micronaire and Relations to Fiber HVI and AFIS Qualities between Deltapine® and PhytoGen Upland Varieties. FIBERS. 13:41. https://doi.org/10.3390/fib13040041.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/fib13040041

Interpretive Summary: Cotton fiber micronaire (MIC) is an essential fiber quality and characterizes both fiber maturity and fineness components. Although MIC is not an ideal parameter to describe the inherent maturity-fineness complexity, it is commonly used by textile manufacturers as a substitute to fiber maturity. Almost all cottons produced in the U.S. are classed or graded following official standards and standardized procedures by using high volume instruments (HVI) on a conditioned fiber sample with a constant weight. Cotton fibers still attached to cotton seeds (or seed cotton) have to be harvested first and then ginned for fiber quality testing. There is an increasing interest in rapid and accurate analysis of cotton MIC using low-cost and portable systems with the least fiber preparation steps. Previous studies investigated the potential of using near infrared (NIR) and attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR FT-IR) instruments to measure fiber MIC. This study further compared how MIC affects the fiber HVI and advanced fiber information system (AFIS) qualities between Deltapine® and PhytoGen upland varieties, with MIC development benefiting the desired fiber HVI strength improvement and also HVI short fiber index (SFI), AFIS neps, AFIS short fiber contents, and AFIS immature fiber content (IFC) reduction. Next, MIC values were found to be positively and greatly correlated with algorithmic MIR values of ATR FT-IR spectra. The result reaffirmed cotton scientists an alternative and rapid tool for laboratory MIC assessment at early MIC testing in remote / breeding locations.

Technical Abstract: Cotton micronaire (MIC) is an essential fiber quality index that characterizes both fiber maturity and fineness components. This study compared how MIC affects the fiber high volume instrument (HVI) and advanced fiber information system (AFIS) qualities between Deltapine® and PhytoGen upland varie-ties. There were noticeable differences among HVI and AFIS qualities from Deltapine® fiber samples to PhytoGen samples, with significant differences for HVI strength and elongation. MIC development benefited fiber HVI strength enhancement and also HVI short fiber index (SFI), AFIS neps, AFIS short fiber contents, and AFIS immature fiber content (IFC) reduction, all of which were desired. Adversely, MIC evolution could cause fiber undesired HVI Rd lowering, HVI +b boosting, and AFIS UQL(w) and L5%(n) decreasing. Further, MIC values were not related with lint turnout ap-parently, but they were positively and greatly correlated with algorithmic MIR values of attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR FT-IR) spectra. The result demonstrated the ap-plicability of ATR FT-IR technique combined with MIR approach for rapid laboratory MIC as-sessment at early MIC testing in remote / breeding locations.