• Cotton, often referred as "White gold" has been in cultivation in India for more than five thousand years.
• Though synthetic / man-made fibres have made inroads in many countries in the world, cotton deserves the prime position in India constituting more than 70% of the total fibre consumption in the textile sector.
• The economic reforms and the trade policy liberalistion carried out during the last decade with a view of globalising the Indian economy have exposed the Indian cotton textile industry to a new challenge.
• In India, cotton is grown over an area of about 9 million hectares and provides livelihood for over 4 million farming families.
• Various allied activities like ginning, yarn and fabric production, textile processing, garment manufacture, marketing etc., provide employment to several million people.
• Several ancillary industries like fertilizer, pesticide, agrochemicals, dyeing industry etc., depend on cotton.
• The value of textile material exported from India during 1998-99 amounted to over Rs.5,27,208 million, comprising 30% of the total foreign exchange earnings of the country.
• In the last two decades, the production of cotton has gone up from 7.5 million bales in 1983-84 to 16.3 million bales of 170 kg/bale during 1998-99.
• This is due to the introduction of high yielding varieties, hybrids and proper management of insect pests and diseases.
• The cotton required for the purpose of manufacturing yarn is cultivated in about 9 million hectares of land in India and thus India ranks first in the world.
• Yet, in regard to productivity of cotton, we are far behind other cotton producing countries.
• While per hectare yield of cotton in India is as low as 333 kgs, a small country like Turkey produces 1170 kgs of cotton per hectare and occupies the first rank in the world.
• The per hectare yield of cotton in USA is 696 kgs and in China it is 1026 kgs.
• The higher productivity in these countries is mainly due to innovative and modernized method of cultivation.
• In India, more than 75% of the cotton is cultivated either without suitable irrigation facilities or under rainfed conditions as well as due to the non-adoption of good seeds and manures.
• However, in recent times, the adoption of improved technologies on cotton cultivation have paved the way for stabilising the yield atleast to certain extent and this is a welcome feature.

• 1969 Sujatha, the first commercial extra long G. barbadense cotton
• 1970 First commercial Hybrid cotton H-4 (C.T. Patel)
• 1972 First interspecific hybrid cotton Varalakshmi (Dr. B.H. Katarki)
• 1974 Suvin, still superior to Sujatha for spinning 100-120's counts
• 1981 DCH-32 an extra long staple hybrid cotton, a land mark in Heterosis breeding
• 1982 Superior medium staple Variety LRA 5166 ( R. Krishna Murthy)
• 1982 Resistance Breeding programme starts for verticillium wilt (Dr. K.V. Srinivasan and A. Kannan)
• 1995 DHB-105, a suitable replacement for DCH-32 (Dr. B.M. Khadi)
• 1993-95 Hybrid cottons suitable for cotton-wheat cropping sequence released such as 'Fatch' for Punjab, 'Dhanalakshmi' for Haryana and "Maruvikas" for Rajasthan
• 1995 Another hybrid "Om Shankar" adaptable for the entire North- Zone tract.
• A part from these, number of hybrids released by several private sectors.
• The hybrids, which require seed renewal every crop season are estimated to be grown on 45% of the total cotton area of 8m. ha and the turnover of hybrid cotton seed sales is estimated around Rs. 180 crores annually, from a thriving private sector seed industry.

Crop production

• Location specific package of practices has been developed concurrently with the release of improved varieties and hybrids for adoption in different cotton zones.
• A sequential cropping of gram, pea or berseem after early sown (May) cotton in northern zone found to be highly remunerative.
• In central zone (Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh) inter cropping with cowpea and incorporating as live mulch benefited the cotton crop and brought down aphid population. This practice also helped in conserving soil moisture in rainfed areas.
• In southern zone, cotton inter cropped with short duration soybean (65 days) not only generated additional income to the farmers, but also proved to be one of the best integrated pest management practice, as the soybean harboured bio-control agents to keep in check Helicoverpa and sucking pests on cotton.

Crop protection

• Instead of rel ying solely on chemical pesticides, the concept of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) has received major attention in the crop protection programme.
• In recent years, special emphasis has been given to pesticides of botanical origin from Neem and Pongamia, bio pesticides and the release of bio-control agents in the field.
• Insecticide Resistance Management studies has been initiated on American bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera).
• Mass production techniques of the three natural enemies viz., Chrysopa sp. (predator) against sucking pests, Trichogramma sp. (Parasitoid) against boll worm eggs and Nuclear Polyhedrosis virus (NPV) for Heliothis sp. have been standardized.
• Resistance sources of various diseases identified earlier are being utilized for multiple disease Resistance to bacterial blight and leaf spot diseases.

• Though there is spectacular increase in production, the productivity is low against world average. This is mainly due to 70 percent of cotton grown under rainfed conditions, and seasonal incidence of pests and diseases in irrigated cottons.

Approaches to meet the challenging problems of cotton

• Breeding for yield improvement
• Improving rainfed cotton productivity
• Breeding for new fibre quality parameters
• Genetic resources utilization
• Interspecific hybridization
• Hybrid cotton Breeding
• G. barbadense improvement
• G. arboreum improvement
• Resistance Breeding
• Biotechnological perspectives
• Integrated crop Production Management - Integrated Pest Management (IPM) - Integrated Nutrient Management (INM)
• Eco-friendly cotton production
• seed technology
• Post-harvest technology
• Constraint and Impact Analysis
• Policy perspectives