During the 1995 USDA classing season, random samples of upland cotton were collected from across the U. S. cotton growing belt to be tested for quality at the Agricultural Experiment Station at Clemson, S. C. Approximately 1300 of these samples were tested for fineness/maturity with an FMT Micromat using the double compression test method. Near infrared (NIR) spectra were recorded for a large number of these cottons to use in developing a rapid test method to estimate maturity. This report describes the relationship between maturity and micronaire for these cottons and demonstrates the accuracy of using absorbance values at combinations of wavelengths to estimate maturity.