Importance of Cotton crop

No one knows exactly how old cotton is. Scientists searching caves in Mexico found bits of cotton bolls and pieces of cotton cloth that proved to be at least 7,000 years old. They also found that the cotton itself was much like that grown in America today.

In the Indus River Valley in Pakistan, cotton was being grown, spun and woven into cloth 3,000 years BC. At about the same time, natives of Egypt’s Nile valley were making and wearing cotton clothing.
Arab merchants brought cotton cloth to Europe about 800 A.D. When Columbus discovered America in 1492, he found cotton growing in the Bahama Islands. By 1500, cotton was known generally throughout the world.
Cotton was first spun by machinery in England in 1730. The industrial revolution in England and the invention of the cotton gin in the U.S. paved the way for the important place cotton holds in the world to

Eli Whitney, a native of Massachusetts, secured a patent on the cotton gin in 1793, though patent office records indicate that the first cotton gin may have been built by a 

machinist named Noah Homes two years before Whitney’s patent was filed. The gin, short for engine, could do the work 10 times faster than by hand.

The gin made it possible to supply large quantities of cotton fiber to the fast-growing textile industry. Within 10 years, the value of the U.S. cotton crop rose from $150,000 to more than $8 million.

The cotton plant has great economic importance because cotton fiber is obtained from its fruits. Additionally than cotton fiber for textiles, other commercial products are also obtained from the cotton plant: such as raw materials for soap manufacturing, cellulose that is used in some cosmetics and in paper making, cooking oil, and animal feedstock, among others.
Even in international bank notes cotton has a prime importance, the Euro currency bill paper is completely made from cotton. Also the dollar bill, in its more modern versions is also manufactured with this fiber.

The main cotton producing countries traditionally have been United States, China and the Soviet Union countries followed by India, Pakistan and Brazil. The main consumer countries in the world are: China, India, United States, Pakistan and the European countries which have large tetxile production volumes.

Cotton is one of the oldest fibre crops. Genetic studies show that four species have contributed to a great demand for modern cultivated cotton. Gossypium hirsutum & Gossypium barbadense accounts for more than 99% of world supply of raw cotton factory use.

Pakistan is an important cotton & yarn producing country with potential to become a key force in the global cotton & textile market place. However, in order to attain this goal the country has to improve the areas of cotton marketing & quality control. There is also a growing realization that the challenges of the new world trade order & ISO-9000 systems demand positive & quick responses to the demands of competitive world market.

Cotton crop, mainly grown for fibre purpose, has many other valuable uses. Cottonseed has 30% starch, 25% semi-drying oil & 16-20% protein. It is also used in the manufacture of medicinal supplies, tarpaulins, cordage & belting. The cotton hulls serve 

some 400 textile mills, 7 million spindles, 27,000 looms in the mill sector (including 15,000 as roughages for livestock & the linters (a fuzz of short seed hair) is used in the manufacture of felts, twine, writing papers, plastics, carpets, explosives & cotton wool.

Cotton is an important source of vegetable oil. The amount of oil varies in different Gossypium species, e.g., 18.5% in Asiatic cotton, 19.5 % in upland cotton & 22.24 % in Egyptian cotton. The oil can be hydrogenated for margarine or used as cooking oil, salad oil, & for packing fish & cure meats. The lower quality of oil is used in the manufacturing of vegetable soup & lubricants. Cotton waste, trash, & other residues, can be converted into ethanol with no environmental pollution. Glucose (9.4 %) & reducing sugars (43 %) have been obtained by acid hydrolysis of powdered cotton stalks (1:10 w/v) with 72 % sulphuric acid at 30 Celsius for 45 minutes. Production of lime using cotton-ginned residues as a combustible material in the furnace of continuous operation, have also been reported. Dried cotton sticks are an important source of fuel for domestic use.

Pakistan is the fifth largest producer of cotton in the world, the third largest exporter of raw cotton, the fourth largest consumer of cotton, and the largest exporter of cotton yarn. 1.3 million farmers (out of a total of 5 million) cultivate cotton over 3 million hectares, covering 15 per cent of the cultivable area in the country. Cotton and cotton products contribute about 10 per cent to GDP and 55 per cent to the foreign exchange earnings of the country. As a whole, between 30 and 40 per cent of the cotton ends up as domestic consumption of final products. The remaining is exported as raw cotton, yarn, cloth, and garments.

Cotton production supports Pakistan’s largest industrial sector, comprising shuttleless looms), over 250,000 looms in the non-mill sector, 700 knitwear units, 4,000 garment units (with 200,000 sewing machines), 650 dyeing and finishing units (with finishing capacity of 1,150 million square meters per year), nearly 1,000 ginneries, 300 oil expellers, and 15,000 to 20,000 indigenous, small scale oil expellers (kohlus). It is by any measure Pakistan’s most important economic sector. Not surprisingly, government policy has generally been used to maintain a stable and often relatively low domestic price of cotton, especially since 1986-87 through the imposition of export duties, in order to support domestic industry.