Student Projects/Cotton cultivation

COTTON CULTIVATION
Cotton is the one of the oldest and commercial crops in the World and traditional crop in India to obtain Fabrics. Black soil is preferable for cotton growing but red and sandy loam soil also good for farming. It can grow on Rainy as well as Irrigated water with properly managed water system. It is Kharif crop, it takes 5-6 months to completion of crop. Usually in Southern part of Karnataka. Time of seed sowing during April, May. Harvested after 4-6 months of sowing.Cotton is cultivated for fiber and seeds. It comes under the family Malvaceae.

Seeds are planted and seeds germinated after 4-5 days of sowing. Plants are grown into green herbs within a weeks, these develops into bushes and shrubs. Provide fertilizers to plants at the age of 1-2 months in between the growing stages remove weeds by ploughing plants.Plants blooms for about 6-7 weeks depending upon environmental condition. Flowers are yellow and pink coloured. During and after flowering, spray fungicides and insecticides to control fungi and insect. After pollination flower replaced with fruit and it is also called as Cotton bolls.

After the maturation of fruit, the boll ripens then turn to brown colour and it splits open to reveals the fluffy, white cotton is exposed with the help of sunlight now cotton is ready to be picked up when bolls crack open and then hand labor are used to harvest cotton.

In developed countries the crop is harvested by machines. They are cotton pickers and stripper are used to removed the cotton from plants.