Best Management Practices to Prevent Cotton Contamination and Preserve Fiber Quality for Farmers and Ginners

Description and Salient Features :

Cottons are being contaminated by wide range of impurities gathered during picking and post-harvest handling, till it reaches ginning industry. The quality of Indian cotton gets deteriorated because of contaminants both organic and inorganic. The cotton gets contaminated at various levels, viz. at farms, during transportation to farm house, storage, transportation to markets, at market yards and at ginning & pressing factories. Due to this problem of high contamination, Indian cotton is sold at discounted rates. Contamination represents a significant threat and element of cost to ginning and spinning mills, as it forces them to implement a range of costly methods to remove the contamination.  To address this issue, ICAR-CIRCOT has developed and suggested appropriate best farm practices and post-harvest management practices to be followed to preserve the fiber quality and to prevent the contamination at the sources of contamination.

Institute has also developed a clean cotton picking kit comprising of cotton cloth head gear/scarf  and cotton cloth bags for cotton picking,  for filing picked cotton and for unloading picked cotton at the end of field after picking. 

Stakeholders : 

• If farmers follow the best farm practices for clean cotton picking and use clean cotton picking kit, the contamination level will be drastically reduced and farmers will get premium price. 
• If ginners follow the best management practices, the contamination will be reduced and the fiber quality will be preserved. 
• Improvement in quality of Indian cotton
• Improvement in export potential for Indian cotton

Cost  : 

Rs. 1000/- per set of clean cotton picking kit made out of cotton cloth 

Status of Popularisation : 

Better management practices to prevent cotton contamination and preserve fiber quality for farmers and ginners were popularised through awareness programmes, on-field demonstrations, trainings and extension programmes. Large number of clean cotton picking programmes were conducted for farmers across the country.