There’s a New Breed Coming to Town
Developing New Pima Cotton Varieties

Ask Hal Moser, an assistant research scientist with The University of Arizona Department of Plant Sciences, what a cotton plant is and he can tell you. One or two thousand times over. To date, that is how many experimental varieties he and his research team have bred in their search for a new variety of Pima cotton. Moser heads the College of Agriculture’s newly revived Pima Cotton Genetics and Breeding Program at the UA Maricopa Agricultural Center (MAC).

The yellow cotton "rose".The Breeding and Genetics Program was previously a part of the USDA/ ARS applied research programs. After cuts in applied research programs at the federal level, the UA continued with the project in 1994. The College of Agriculture and the Agricultural Experiment Station have had a role in the USDA-ARS Pima Cotton Breeding Program for several decades, Moser says. The current program is funded by the Delta & Pine Land Company, which will receive first refusal rights to an exclusive license to sell newly developed varieties. The UA will hold the patent on it. It’s expected that a new variety of UA-developed Pima cotton will be released in 1999 or 2000.

This is the third season in the program’s quest to breed a progeny that will become the newest variety of Pima cotton. From 45,000 cotton plants to the current 1,000 experimental varieties planted on two 25-acre plots at MAC, Moser and his team of research assistants and technicians are looking for that special “yellow rose” that will captivate the Pima cotton world as much as the popular S-7 variety did in 1991.

Known as Gossypium barbadense, Pima cotton is characterized by its silk-like yet strong fibers known as staples. These fibers are in high demand for products like sewing thread, shirting, combed cotton sheets, and fine-knit goods. In particular, high quality shirts and select home furnishings keep the market for this crop very lucrative. Yet in Arizona, obtaining the best market price has not always been beneficial to the Arizona Pima cotton grower.

“This year (1996), there were an estimated forty thousand acres of Pima cotton planted in Arizona,” Moser says. “Compare that to nearly two years ago when acreage planted in Arizona was forty-eight thousand. Growers have had a lot of problems with the plant’s lack of heat tolerance and susceptibility to late season insect pressure which have resulted in low yields at harvest time.”

The plant’s inability to produce a high lint yield under heat stress and high insect pressure has caused many growers to drop their acreage of Pima cotton altogether. Within the last five years, the total acreage planted to Pima has dropped from 106,000 in 1991 to 48,600 in 1995. And the numbers may continue to decrease, according to Moser, since the plant cannot hold up to the high night temperatures typical in central Arizona. High night temperatures will cause many plants to shed their squares, flowers and small bolls, which will decrease the lint yield.

That is why, Moser says, 80 to 90 percent of the cotton grown in Arizona is Upland cotton. It is known for its heat tolerance, but also has shorter fibers of a slightly coarser texture. Products like cotton balls, most fabrics, cotton pants, socks and T-shirts are made from this type. Upland cotton prices usually run lower than those for Pima.

Moser’s program seeks to retain the best characteristics of Pima S-7 cotton, while obtaining and improving still other characteristics, through the following goals:

gaining a higher lint yield;

retaining or improving the superior fiber quality;

gaining greater heat tolerance;

achieving early maturity that produces a good yield in a short amount of growing time.

“Therefore, this is a process of ‘try, try again’,” Moser says. “You have to keep planting and growing cotton, in this case, Pima cotton, to make sure it keeps all of the desirable characteristics of its original.”

The last variety of Pima cotton to be released by a public program was Pima S-7 in 1991. Breeding cotton is an applied, meticulous process, some of which is done by trial and error, according to Moser.

“It’s a long process, from the cross-pollination of cotton varieties in the greenhouse, to production of a new variety that can be planted in the field, especially if you start working with more than forty thousand individual plants,” he says.

The breeding process begins in the greenhouse where plants are cross-pollinated to obtain a seed that has the potential to become a new variety.

“Currently, we cross-pollinate two different varieties that are used now or varieties that existed in the past,” Moser states. “Then we take the offspring we produce from the hybrid seed and plant them in the field. From there we select the offspring that produced well in the field, with the objectives we are looking for, and hopefully continue for two or three generations until we develop hundreds of new experimental lines that produce a high lint yield and have superior fiber quality.”

Moser adds that it takes an additional two to three years of field testing those experimental lines before they find a successful variety that they believe will produce well. Initially, most of the field testing is being done at MAC. As they draw closer to finding the new variety, the planting of 10 to 20 select lines will expand to seven sites, five in Arizona and two in California. “All of this to get one new variety,” he says.

USDA geneticist Richard Percy, who is also located at MAC, is cooperating with Moser on the Breeding Program. Both are conducting a study, in cooperation with Peter Ellsworth, a UA entomology specialist with the Department of Entomology, on different variations of Pima cotton to determine its susceptibility to the whitefly.

“One long-term goal we have is to produce a variety that is tolerant to the whitefly,” Moser says. “The growers who actually grow the variety that we develop will determine the success of our program.”

While it’s a process that takes years, breeding cotton is what Moser has chosen as his life’s work in order to have that one variety that will meet and exceed growing expectations.

As a scientist breeding a new variety of Pima cotton, Moser knows it’s not a matter of ‘presto, chango and you got it.’ “It may take me years to find that particular breed or variety that will have growers beating down our door to get it,” he said. “I’ll probably be doing this until I am eighty. But that’s OK, because I love what I do.”


Article Written by Crystal Renfrow, ECAT, College of Agriculture
This is part of the 1996 Arizona Experiment Station Research Report
This document is located at http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/general/resrpt1996/new_breed.html
Return to index for 1996 report

Researcher:

Hal Moser, Maricopa Agricultural Center
Phone: (520) 568-2273 Ext. 253