Agro Practice

Cotton (Gossypium sp)

• Cotton is a genus of the Malvaceae family.

• Cotton can be grown in areas where temperatures are high and water is relatively scarce; and of course, much of the best cotton is grown under irrigation.

• Scientific Classification
  Kingdom: Plantae
  Division: Magnoliophyta
  Class: Magnoliopsida
  Order: Malvales
  Family: Malvaceae
  Genus: Gossypium

Crop Season

• Cotton is a kharif crop.

• Growing areas - Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and parts of Andhra Pradesh & Karnataka.

• Irrigated crop is sown from March-May.

• Rainfed crop in June-July with the commencement of the monsoon.

Morphology

• A plant typically has a central stem and many branches.

• The flowers have five separate petals, and like all members of the Malvaceae, the stamens are united into a column surrounding the style.

• The ovary develops into a capsule, which is a dry structure that splits open along four or five lines. Inside are the seeds and fibres. Each fibre is actually a single cell hair that grows from the epidermis of the seed coat. The cell wall becomes thickened by adding layers of cellulose.

• There are 2 types of hairs, lint (long) and fuzz (short), and, of course, selection has been for the longest lint. Most of the wild species of cotton are lintless.

Preparation of Land

• In northzone, the field is irrigated after the harvest of wheat and ploughed. Thereafter a light irrigation is provided and the field is ploughed and the soil is planked with a wooden plank.

• In central and southern zone of India where cotton is a rainfed crop, deep ploughing is recommended to destroy perennial weeds once in 4-5 years. The field is prepared by repeated ploughing with a blade harrow with the onset of pre-monsoon rains.

• In red soils of southern zone having poor moisture retention, field is given 2-3 light ploughings after harvesting.