General Description of Cotton

Abstract

Cotton has been cultivated by human beings for at least 3000 years. However, the dawn of modern cotton industry began in the seventeenth century in Americas due to the domestication of perennial wild tetraploid cotton to an annual day-neutral crop. There are four cultivated cotton species, two diploid species, and two tetraploid species. Their origins and distributions are described. Cotton fibers are unicellular trichomes or plant hairs that differentiate from epidermal cells of developing cottonseeds. Cotton fiber development divides into four distinctive yet overlapping stages: initiation, elongation, secondary cell wall biosynthesis, and maturation. In this chapter, the general knowledge about the life cycle (from seed to seed) of a cotton plant, harvesting, ginning, and cotton products are discussed. In addition, this chapter also provides a brief view of new technologies such as transgenes and fiber genomics. This chapter serves an introduction about cotton and the subsequent chapters of the book.