Vegetative propagation of cotton plants by cuttings

Abstract

Cottons derived from the species Gossypium hirsutum such as the Acala varieties, and from G. barbadense such as Sea Island and Tanguis varieties—or hybrids between the two species—have been found easy to propagate vegetatively by cuttings. There are obvious advantages in certain disease studies to conducting experiments with genetically uniform or clonal lines of cotton. There may also be advantages to the seed industry. For example, a plant selected as a basic seed parent for superior yield and quality could be increased many fold by cuttings and an abundant seed crop realized—sufficient to reduce the time between initial selection, and release of the seed to growers by perhaps one seed generation.