This research studied the effects of delayed harvests and fiber exposure on the different cotton fiber properties. We found a significant downward trend for microafis and fiber strength values when harvest was delayed. A clear downward trend was observed in the upper quartile length values which were reduced when harvest was delayed.

A decay function was used to model deterioration trends. The boll exposure period was found to be a reasonable predictor of the fiber quality values across harvest dates. For the upper quartile length, the predicted and actual values had poor agreement across harvest dates. For the microafis and fiber strength, however, the models showed good performance.