Usually referred as ‘white gold’ and one of the important commercial crops, cotton plays a pivotal
role in economic, political and social affairs of the world. It is cultivated in nearly 60 countries.
Cotton, like coconut, is a source of all the three Fs: Food, Feed and Fibre.
What are the climatic conditions required for cultivation of cotton?
Cotton, a semi-xerophyte, is grown in tropical and subtropical conditions.
A minimum temperature of 15°C is required for better germination at field conditions. The optimum temperature for vegetative growth is 21°-27°C and it can tolerate temperature to the extent of 43°C, but temperature below 21°C is detrimental to the crop.
Warm days and cool nights with large diurnal variations during the period of fruiting are conducive to good boll and fiber development. It requires about 50 cm of rainfall. In case of scanty rainfall, irrigation is required.
What type of soil is required for cultivation of cotton?
Cotton is grown on a variety of soils, ranging from well-drained deep alluvial soils in the Northern Plains to black clayey soils or regur in the Peninsular India.
What is the sowing season of cotton?
Cotton sowing season varies considerably from zone to zone and is generally early (April-May) in the
northern plains, and is monsoon based in the peninsular India.
The pre-monsoon dry sowing, practiced in parts of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh during the last week of May or in early June, have been found to give higher kapas (unginned-cotton) yield.
Which are the top five cotton producing countries worldwide in 2022/2023?
The top five cotton producing countries include China, India, United States, Brazil and Australia respectively.
Which are the top five cotton exporting countries worldwide in 2022/2023?
The top five cotton exporting countries include United States, Brazil, Australia,Greece and India respectively.
Which are the top five cotton importing countries worldwide in 2022/2023?
The top five cotton importing countries include Bangladesh, Vietnam, China, Pakistan and Turkey respectively.
Which are the top five cotton producing states in India in 2022/2023?
The top five cotton producing states in India include Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana, Rajasthan and Karnataka respectively.
What is the composition of cotton?
Cotton consists of : seed 62% ; white fluffy fibre or lint about 36% and wastes 2% separated from the lint during ginning.
Cotton seed, in turn, contains 13% oil used for cooking and frying. The 85% residual cake, after extraction of oil from the seed and 2% processing losses, is a protein-rich feed ingredient for livestock and poultry.
Cottonseed is India’s third largest domestically-produced vegetable oil (after mustard and soyabean) and is second biggest feed cake/meal (after soyabean).
What is the share of cotton in India’s total textile fibre consumption?
Cotton has a roughly two-thirds share in India’s total textile fibre consumption.
What is the present status of textile sector in India?
India is one of the largest consumers and producers of cotton and jute in the world.
95% of the world’s hand-woven fabric comes from India.
It is the 2nd largest employment provider after agriculture. India is 2nd largest manufacturer of PPE and producer of polyester, silk and fibre in the world.
How India is emerging as an important player in cotton trade?
After partition (1947), Indian Union was left with only 60% of the crop production but it had over
95% of the cotton-based industry. This has led to a serious situation related to raw material availability
(that undivided India enjoyed). However, India continued to export some quantity of coarse, short
staple desi-cotton.
The country made remarkable advances in cotton production, especially after the advent of hybrid cotton from the mid-seventies. Consequently, India could not only meet the domestic demand in full from its own production but could also generate surplus for export in years of bumper crops. India is gradually emerging as a major player in the world cotton trade.
What are the various Government initiatives for the Cotton sector in India?
Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS)
Market Access Initiative (MAI) Scheme
SAMARTH (Scheme for Capacity Building in the Textile Sector)
Mega Investment Textiles Parks (MITRA)
Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme to promote the production of MMF Apparel, MMF Fabrics and Products of Technical Textiles
How the Bt revolution has helped in increasing India’s cotton production?
Between 2000-01 and 2013-14, India’s cotton production, in terms of lint, almost trebled from 140 lakh to 398 lakh bales of 170 kg each. So did the output of oil and cake to nearly 1.5 million tonnes (mt) and 4.5 mt respectively.
This was significantly enabled by Bt technology. From 2002, Indian farmers began planting genetically-modified (GM) cotton hybrids incorporating genes isolated from a soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt.
The Bt genes coded for proteins toxic to the deadly Helicoverpa armigera or American bollworm insect pest. As the share of Bt hybrids in the country’s area sown under cotton touched 95%, average per-hectare lint yields more than doubled from 278 kg in 2000-01 to 566 kg in 2013-14.
Why India’s cotton production is on a decline now?
The gains didn’t last. The production and yields fell after 2013-14, to 343.5 lakh bales and 447 kg/hectare respectively in 2022-23.
The reason for that had primarily to do with the Pectinophora gossypiella or pink bollworm (PBW). The Bt toxins were originally supposed to provide protection against both the Helicoverpa and PBW caterpillars that burrow into the bolls or fruits of the cotton plant in which the lint and seeds grow.
Bt cotton has retained its effectiveness against the American bollworm. But after 2014, an unusually large survival of PBW larvae has been detected on cotton flowers and heavy infestation of the pest has been seen.
PBW is a monophagous pest that feeds mainly on cotton. This is unlike Helicoverpa that is polyphagous, with alternative hosts from arhar (pigeon pea), jowar (sorghum) and maize to tomato, chana (chickpea) and lobiya (cowpea).
Being monophagous enabled the PBW larvae to develop resistance to Bt proteins over time. This was more so, as farmers virtually stopped growing non-Bt cotton. The PBW population that became resistant from continuously feeding on Bt hybrids, therefore, gradually overtook and replaced the ones that were susceptible.
The pest’s short life cycle (25-35 days from egg laying to adult moth stage), conducive for it to complete at least 3-4 generations in a single crop season of 180-270 days, further accelerated the resistance breakdown process.
What are the various measures through which pest can be controlled?
Spraying insecticides
The conventional route of spraying insecticides – such as profenofos, chlorpyrifos, quinalphos, emamectin benzoate, chlorantraniliprole, indoxacarb, cypermethrin, lambda cyhalothrin, deltamethrin and fenpropathrin – has had limited efficacy against the PBW larvae. These feed on the cotton bolls as well as the squares (buds) and tender flowers, affecting lint quality and yields.
Mating disruption
An alternative approach has been “mating disruption”. It involves deploying Gossyplure, a pheromone signaling chemical that is secreted by female PBW moths to attract male adults. In this case, the pheromone is artificially synthesised and filled into pipes or lures. The male adult moths are, then, attracted towards the lures and do not mate with females during their 7-10 days time. In the event, eggs aren’t laid and they don’t grow into larvae (which feed on the cotton plant parts), before pupating and becoming next-generation adults.
What are PBKnot and SPLAT?
The Central Insecticides Board & Registration Committee under the Agriculture Ministry has approved two mating disruption products – PBKnot and SPLAT – for controlling PBW.
The road ahead
As a crop cultivated in some 12.5 million hectares predominantly by smallholders – and a source of all three Fs – cotton’s importance to India’s agriculture and textile sector is obvious to anybody.
While Bt technology gave a huge impetus to production during the first decade-and-a-half of this century, the yield gains from it have been somewhat eroded by the emergence of new dominant pests, especially PBW. The threat of pest infestation has also discouraged farmers in states like Punjab from growing cotton.
It only highlights the central role that new technologies – whether GM, next-generation insecticides or mating disruption – will have to play in sustaining the cultivation of this fibre, food and feed crop.
PRACTICE QUESTIONS
QUES . Regur soil is most suitable for the cultivation of:
(a) Groundnut
(b) Cotton
(c) Tobacco
(d) Sugarcane
(b)
