The National Cotton Council’s Quality Task Force (QTF) provides a forum for reaching consensus on U.S. cotton industry quality initiatives. By recognizing and describing all quality factors associated with raw cotton, the industry can remain confident that the market receives and sends the correct signals to growers, ginners and others who are competing in international markets for market share. The industry remains focused on evaluating methods to determine cotton lint quality and utility.

A late 2003 QTF meeting included reviews of sticky cotton research, moisture studies, new ginning technologies, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service reports, short fiber and nep measurement, and lint contamination. The QTF Committee’s statement on bale moisture became the basis for NCC and industry action on that issue.

The NCC’s zero tolerance program is aimed at preventing this piece of metal, plastics and any foreign material from contaminating seed cotton and lint.

Industry participation in ongoing contamination prevention initiatives – including aiming for zero tolerance - is crucial to the survival of the U.S. cotton industry.

NCC staff is reviewing and updating NCC contamination educational materials, and making them available in the latest communications vehicles, including power point and compact disk. In addition, NCC Member Services staff will be trained to help deliver this message across the Cotton Belt.

The need exists to develop and  standardize simulated handling tests to more rapidly screen bale packaging materials for determining worthiness for field testing.

National Cotton Council packaging specialists are developing draft protocol proposals for predicting packaging performance related to floor abrasion, breakout force, tear/snag resistance, wire-bagging shear, vapor permeability, air flow and resistance, stack stability, water resistance, and condensation. The need exists to develop and standardize simulated handling tests to more rapidly screen materials for determining worthiness for field testing. 

Bale packaging specifications, testing procedures and requirements of currently approved materials also will be reviewed and the existing data base of performance criteria will be correlated with data from new procedures.

A rainfall simulation by Texas A&M University researchers determines moisture penetration of a module cover sample.

This project is aimed at providing guidance to module cover manufacturers, ginners and producers about the characteristics needed to protect seed cotton stored in modules.

Researchers at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station continue to: 1) evaluate the performance of new and used cotton module cover materials in resisting the formation of defects and moisture penetration. This includes discovering the modes of cover defect formation: 1) breakdown by UV-light, 2) cracking during storage, 3) puncture by sticks or burrs. They also will continue to evaluate and refine the operation of module builder design modifications intended to generate more moisture resistance shapes. This includes comparing modules’ shapes after several days of storage and determining differences between those formed with and without a retrofit installation.

Data from this three-year project eventually will be shared with an engineering professional society for updating obsolete cover standards.