Cotton Fiber Quality Drives Global Ginning Decisions

Feb 07, 2019

Two cotton ginning industry leaders recently visited the Nonwovens and Advanced Cotton Laboratory at Texas Tech University to discuss the latest developments in cotton fiber quality.

Shankar Venkatachalam, president of Bajaj ConEagle, LLC, and Steve Moffett, general manager of Lubbock Electric Company, conducted hands-on experiments on the oil absorption characteristics of low micronaire cotton mats developed in the laboratory, assisted by graduate students.

Oleophilic and biodegradable characteristics of cotton mats will create new opportunities for cotton, stated Venkatachalam. And, fiber strength, length and maturity play an important role in the ginning process, as well as influencing the type of ginning method used.

Venkatachalam noted that while cotton length is good in India, other characteristics like strength and maturity ratio make them not suitable for saw ginning. India’s ginning sector is based on roller ginning, while, in the United States, it is based on saw ginning. Because of good fiber strength and maturity in the U.S., fiber damage does not occur in the saw ginning.

Moffett stated that substantial progress has been made in the past 20 years with regard to the staple length in West Texas, noting that the majority of today’s crop is 36 staple. The tremendous technology influence in ginning – where remote monitoring is helping with production efficiency – and improvements in cotton genetics and varieties with higher staple length and more yield have enabled gins to operate at their full capacity.

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.