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ARS Home » Southeast Area » New Orleans, Louisiana » Southern Regional Research Center » Cotton Structure and Quality Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #164004
Title: ORGANIZATON OF THE BELTWIDE COTTON UTILIZATION CONFERENCE

Author
item Robert Jr, Kearny
item Parikh, Dharnidhar

Submitted to: 2003 Beltwide Cotton Conference
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/1/2003
Publication Date: 6/1/2003
Citation: Robert Jr, K.Q., Parikh, D.V. 2004. Organizaton of the Beltwide Cotton Utilization Conference. In: Proceedings of the Beltwide Cotton Conferences, January 5-8, 2004, San Antonio, TX. p. 2670-2673.

Interpretive Summary: The Cotton Utilization Conference is the newest of one dozen technical research conferences of the National Cotton Council of America's Beltwide Cotton Conferences. The Utilization Conference has been organized to continue the work of the Cotton Textile Processing and Nonwovens Confeences, which have joined forces as continuing symposia within the new format. Additional forums for reporting research results in Cotton Textile Chemistry, New Products, and Spinner-Breeder interactions are being developed. The new Utilization Conference is envisioned as a key element in cotton's research response to: the loss of a significant portion of domestic mill markets, the ability of the U.S. cotton industry to follow lost markets overseas in the short run, the need to preserve the competitiveness of our remaining production capacity, the need to develop new products and future markets for cotton and cotton byproducts, and the long-term goals of rebuilding the U.S. textile manufacturing sector. This new activity should be of vital interest to all segments of the cotton textile manufacturing and processing-machinery industries, as well as to cotton fiber researchers involved in any aspect of cotton development, production, and processing related to utilization.

Technical Abstract: Workshop discussions held during the 2003 Textile Conference in Nashville revealed that the precipitous collapse of the domestic textile industry had been the occasion for a general realignment within the cotton utilization research community. Accordingly, a Cotton Utilization Conference has been organized so that research reporting can reflect better the new realities of academic, governmental, and industrial R&D environments, starting with the Beltwide Cotton Conferences held at San Antonio, Texas, in January 2004. The annual Beltwide attendance there increased by more than 10% overall, to over 3,400 participants. Important activities in this inaugural year of the Utilization Conference included: a plenary session devoted to a Research Overview, the 13th Cotton Textile Processing Symposium, the 7th Cotton Nonwovens Symposium, the Textile Chemistry & New Products Symposium, a Spinner-Breeder Symposium (joint with the Improvement Conference), a Joint Session with the Quality Measurements Conference on Textile Fiber Quality, and a Joint Session with the Engineering Systems and Ginning Conferences on Cotton Moisture. These assemblies comprised 71 technical presentations, including 33 verbal presentations in the joint sessions, and 36 verbal presentations and two poster presentations within the regular sessions. The speakers included a mix of academic, industry, government, and foreign researchers. Papers presented at the Utilization Conference are published annually by the National Cotton Council of America in the Beltwide Proceedings, which were converted from printed to electronic form in 2002. Beginning with the Textile Conference in 1992, more than five hundred research and technical papers on cotton utilization have been published there.