Testing • Technology
Xu Li, Xue Hua, Zhu Xiaofang
2026, 610(7): 69-72.
As a major country in cotton production and consumption, the cotton industry plays a crucial role in the national economy. Cotton quality directly determines the industrial competitiveness, and impurities are the primary restrictive factor. Cotton impurities include various non-cotton fiber substances such as sand, insect corpses, and sterile seeds. They not only reduce cotton grades and market prices, affect color, hand feel, and spinnability, but also cause equipment wear, yarn defects, and other problems in all links of textile processing. The generation of impurities is affected by multiple factors including nature, planting, harvesting, and processing. Climate conditions, soil fertility, and plant diseases/insect pests increase impurities at the source. Improper use of defoliants, non-standard operations in manual and mechanical harvesting, and backward ginning technology further raise the impurity content. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce impurities through measures such as selecting high-quality varieties, optimizing field management, standardizing harvesting operations, and improving processing technology. In the future, intelligent detection technology, breeding of new impurity-resistant varieties, and green impurity removal methods will become research priorities, contributing to the high-quality and sustainable development of the cotton industry.