Did you know?
Good plant moisture status is critical in the first 20 days after flowering to allow potential fibre elongation rates.
A large emphasis in the agronomy and physiology area was on improving water and nitrogen use efficiency, and improving understanding and mitigating the effects of high temperature stress. Interestingly many presentations that I would have considered to be cotton physiology presentations on temperature and fibre quality studies were given in the crop improvement sessions. Like in Australia this reflects the involvement of crop physiologists supporting breeding initiatives and bringing relevance and understanding of efforts in biotechnology for sourcing germplasm with known traits. Notably many of the initiatives and approaches being undertaken in the areas of temperature stress tolerance and fibre quality have been, or were being undertaken by Australian researchers. Some key presentations that had interesting research that I will be following up on were:
- Research being undertaken in Texas by USDA on genetic variation in pollen tube growth in response to temperature which resulted in differences in boll numbers. This work was being undertaken by John Burke in Lubbock. Variation in pollen growth has implications for producing bolls that have viable seeds, and there maybe sources of germplasm that have some tolerance in high temperatures.
- There were a number of presentations on the use of leaf fluorescence for assessing heat and drought tolerance of cotton germplasm. This work was similar to that which was undertaken by Nicola Cottee. These speakers described some novel approaches to cross checking methodologies used to identify tolerant genotypes.
- Research being undertaken at Texas A&M on their mutated lines of upland cotton with superior fibre length (extra long staple) highlighted similar approaches being undertaken in the ‘Linking farming systems with fibre quality project’. A key element was how they were dismissing cultivars in their textile performance assessments because they were progressively spinning yarns with finer counts. We have not adopted this approach, as we are spinning yarn to a standard count for assessment. I will be raising this point with fellow researchers investigating fibre quality to assess the approach.
Personally I was able to meet with a number of agronomists and physiologists and have discussed plans for collaboration, especially in the areas of fibre quality and for screening for tolerance for abiotic stress (namely temperature and water).
