LUBBOCK -- Researchers at Texas Tech University are touting a longer staple cotton that could open new markets for the Texas crop. Cotton typically grown in Texas is limited in application by its length. The new breed may allow cotton farmers to broaden their demand base and markets for the crops before they are ever produced.
The new cotton, developed over three years by Texas Tech's plant and soil science department in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, and processed at its International Textile Center (ITC), presents growers with a new complex of fiber properties, that, "when combined together, has a quality of fiber that is unprecedented on the Texas Plains," said Dean Ethridge, Ph.D., director of the ITC. "As such, it becomes a candidate for inclusion in textile processes and textile products that have thus far been unavailable to Texas fibers."
Ethridge explained that the Texas staple length, which is a reference method measuring representative length of cotton fiber, is characterized on the Texas South Plains as a short staple, from about an inch to about 1.1 inches in staple length. Ethridge believes the most interesting possibility with this new fiber is that it is going to increase that staple length by 10 -- 20 percent.
"Fiber length is the limiting characteristic of Texas cotton. When you're looking at alternative textile applications, the longer staple can do anything the shorter staples can do. However, the shorter staples can't do everything that the longer staples do, when it comes to making certain products," Ethridge said. "If we could get up into this length category, it would open a new array of consumers who would like to look at our cotton for making those products. It simply expands your demand base."
Ethridge explained that the International Textile Center used a ring-spinning process to develop the cotton into yarn. Ring spinning is the most challenging and demanding spinning technology, and requires the best fiber properties. With it manufacturers are able to make the best looking and the best feeling yarns, which produce the best looking and best feeling fabrics.
In fact, the quality of the yarn caught the attention of Kent Smart, owner of Simply Smart of Lubbock, a knitting manufacturer of high quality full fashion clothing. Smart doubted that West Texas cotton could match the texture and quality of the cotton/synthetic blend he was using. Smart was pleasantly surprised, when, with 30 pounds of the longer-fiber product spun into yarn, he was able to commercially knit six golf shirts of similar quality as those made from the blend.
"Having our product made of 100 percent cotton is superior to having a 50/50 blend, and that is very exciting," said Smart. "When you look at the community here in Lubbock, where you have one of the largest, if not the largest cotton growing regions in America, if you were able to develop a yarn that could be used in fine-gauge, high-end spinning, the marketability of that product would be phenomenal."
Dick Auld, Ph.D., chairman of Texas Tech's plant and soil science department, explained how the cotton was developed over the three-year period of research. "There is a process called 'chemical mutagenesis' in which a researcher applies a chemical that changes the DNA composition. That's where we started with these three generations of HS200 cotton, a product already grown on the South Plains." Auld said that each generation of the newly developed line contained a longer fiber.
Auld and Ethridge agree at this point that the market for this type of cotton would be a niche position that would allow the farmers to receive a bit more value for the fiber they grow. "What we've tried to do is to leave the varieties adapted still intact, so they'll still grow here on the Texas South Plains, and just add a little fiber length and a little fiber quality so we can get a better market price for our cotton," Auld said.
Even though the real future of this new cotton has yet to be determined, Ethridge was visibly delighted with those possibilities. "The steps we have taken have really served to prove that these fiber properties manifested themselves in the yarn and the fabric. We have tangible evidence now, that we have potential for a new kind of fiber to be grown on the Texas Plains."
With a long history in knitting manufacturing, Smart, too, knows about the importance of high quality fiber. "There are very few places you can get this high quality 100 percent cotton yarn. I'm not an economist, but I look at the price of low-grade cotton against the price of higher grade, finer spun cotton, and what that difference could mean to the farming industry here in Lubbock, and I see that it is beyond even what I could imagine," Smart said.
Auld was equally impressed regarding another promising aspect of the project. "What we're excited about is that now we can make these very expensive cotton knit shirts with a product grown in Texas, processed in Texas and put together in Texas. We have a totally Texas-made product that's top of the line. You couldn't buy any better full fashion apparel anywhere else."
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CONTACTS:
Dick Auld, Ph.D., chairman, plant and soil science department, Texas Tech University, (806) 742-2837 or [email protected]
Dean Ethridge, Ph.D., director, International Textile Center at Texas Tech University, (806) 747-3790 or [email protected]
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