Evaluation of Ten Egyptian Cotton Varieties and Experimental Lines for Yield, Quality and Bacterial Blight Resistance

Abstract

This study was conducted in the Agricultural Research Corporation, ARC at Gezira Research Station, Gezira State, Wad Medani, Sudan. The objective of this study was to evaluate ten Egyptian cotton lines for yield, quality and bacterial blight resistance. Significant differences were recorded for earliness of maturity and boll weight and high significant differences were also recorded for weight of lint per boll, seed cotton yield, disease severity, plant height, number of bolls per plant and number of monopodia per plant. No significant differences were observed among genotype for: ginning out-turn, seed index , number of seeds per boll, weight of seed cotton per boll, disease incidence and number of sympodia per plant. The results indicated that 94-B-2 experimental line has an average seed cotton yield advantage of 19% over Barakat-90, with fiber length of 35.1, micronaire value of 3.7 and fiber strength of 37.5 better than Barakat-90. It gave 52% of its yield in the first pick compared to 44 for Barakat-90. It has a GOT of 34% compared to 32.6 for Barakat-90. It recorded a disease incidence and disease severity of 0.58 and 38.8%, respectively, compared to 0.72 and 51.8 for Barakat- 90. Hence this line emerged as a new candidate with new traits: higher seed cotton yield, earliness of maturity, less vulnerability to bacterial blight, higher GOT and better fiber characteristics overwhelming the commercial cotton cultivar Barakat-