With climate change impacting cotton growth, a Mississippi State University (MSU) researcher developed a model to help farmers maintain healthy cotton yields.
Cotton quality impacts how much, or little, money a farmer makes. Given its wide use in manufacturing, cotton is subjected to federal quality measurements. High-quality cotton fibers mean more income for the producer, while low-quality fibers often foreshadow financial loss.
MSU researchers, like Professor K. Raja Reddy, are part of a team that produced the world’s first cotton quality module, allowing cotton producers to better monitor output under changing environmental conditions. Other partners include the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Nebraska Water Center and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service.
The cotton quality module is the culmination of more than a decade of research between Reddy’s team and those at the Nebraska Water Center. The quality module works with GOSSYM, a computer application developed in the 1980s. GOSSYM, derived from the scientific name of cotton, simulates the processes affecting cotton plant growth and yield.
The team conducted experiments on 40 of the most frequently grown cotton plant varieties, making the quality module a robust tool for farmers. The module will be freely accessible for cotton producers and researchers across 74 million acres of cotton fields worldwide. It also has powerful implications in building resiliency to climate change.
Researchers can now use the GOSSYM model to make future predictions on how climate shifts will alter cotton quality. Researchers like Reddy can use this data to propose new governmental policies or recommend agricultural management changes.
The latest version of the GOSSYM source code, including the fiber quality module, is available on the USDA Adaptive Cropping Systems Laboratory GitHub page. The Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station researches plant production to maximize yields while decreasing inputs and helping the environment.
The new module will provide MSU with innovative research opportunities as well. Reddy is looking forward to a new project that will attempt to predict the best planting date to maximize cotton quality, year by year, across 17 states.
Source: https://www.wjtv.com/