Fiber crops After food plants fiber plants are

Fiber crops After food plants, fiber plants are the most important in their usefulness to mankind. Since time immemorial man has been using fiber of plants origin for his clothing and many other needs. Cotton Gossypium spp. Family : Malvaceae.

Botanical characteristics: Cotton is an annual herb, have branching stems, palmately lobed leaves, and showy flowers each with five sepals united in cuplike calyx and five petals whitish or yellowish color that often turn pink with edge. The boll or the capsule containing the seed, lint, and fuzz. The flowering started after 60 -70 days of sowing, and the time from flowering to the opening of the boll about 45 -65 days. When the boll is ripe, the capsule splits along the lines and the cotton pushing out beyond the walls of the capsule. Most of the cotton picked from the ripe bolls and carried in a sack suspended from the shoulder.

Morphological of the cotton plant Four principals of morphological correlation are necessary for full understanding of the architecture of the cotton plant: 1 - Apical meristems make four organs Leaves, stems, roots, and flowers 2 - There are three types of leaves: cotyledons, prophylls and true leaves. 3 - In the axils of each cotyledons, prophyll, or true leaf one and one branch apical meristems develops.

4 - The only difference between a vegetatives branch ( monopodiam) and a fruiting branch (sympodiam) is that the fruiting branch apical meristem after making a prophyll and a true leaf , terminates in a flower. A vegetative branch continuous to make same leaves until same Strees causes it to cease growth during the period before true leaves begin expansion, the primary roots is penetrating deeply in to the soil and branch roots are being formed. There secondary and tertiary roots. Generally however when the primary roots dies, the secondary and tertiary roots a proliferate to form a lateral root system.

As germination begins, the first true leaf is nothing more than a primordium on the growing point between the two cotyledons. At the end of this stage the first true leaf expands to the sun. The leaf a primordium elongates and become lobed in developing the stipule. The arrangement of the leaves on a stem is known as phyllotaxy (3/8) Typical branch development vegetative at the lower nodes of the primary axis the branch is monopodiam , a vegetative limb like the primary axis in length produces additional true leaves and internodes. frequently the monopodiam becomes dormant at this stage.