ABSTRACT

CSIRO has satisfactorily implemented the technique developed at the USDA to measure the maturity of cotton fibers by direct measurement of fiber cross-sections. As part of the protocol used at CSIRO, independent software has been developed in-house to undertake the necessary image analysis to derive fiber perimeter, area and maturity information for each cross-section. In a comparative test of the software between CSIRO and the ITC, the perimeter values obtained from the CSIRO software are in excellent agreement with the corresponding values from the ITC however the CSIRO area and hence maturity values are consistently some 15 to 20 percent smaller. The reason for this remains unclear. CSIRO has also undertaken a significant set of measurements on a set of seven reference cottons supplied by the USDA and the results are in good agreement with the results from ITC on the same samples, apart from the consistent difference in area and maturity values mentioned above. Further the observed range in values measured within one sample is also in good agreement with that observed at the ITC.