Exploring Prospects of Cotton Cultivation under Rainfed Conditions of Pothwar

Abstract

Cotton production has been drastically affected by the climate change through its effect on agronomic practices such as sowing time and adoption of genotypes to various agro-ecological conditions. Interaction of genotypes and sowing date is an important strategy to analyze cotton yield and quality in a rainfed environment. Various morphological, and yield parameters including plant height, boll weight, crop growth rate, lint yield, seed cotton yield, ginning out turn (GOT), fiber fineness, fiber length and fiber strength was recorded. Results of the study revealed that N-878 performed best on an average during all the growing seasons followed by IUB-2013, SS-32 and BS-15 respectively. The best yield and quality were achieved when the cotton cultivars were sown on 22nd April followed by 8th April and 6th June respectively. This study will be helpful to look into performance of genotypes and possibilities of cotton cultivation under rainfed conditions of Pothwar. Also, sowing window of studied cotton genotypes will be explored for cotton cultivation under rainfed conditions of Pothwar. In addition, the present piece of work will provide future direction for research on cotton in the Pothwar region.