Higher yields

Tahir Peyzulla, a cotton farmer in Luntai county, Bayingolin Mongolian autonomous prefecture, said the impact of these new seeds is significant.

"Older varieties had loose plant structures and uneven maturity, making mechanical harvesting inefficient. But since we started using the new variety in 2016, the efficiency of mechanical harvesting has improved significantly," he said, adding that he expects a bumper cotton harvest of around 500 kg per mu this year.

Notably, traditional cotton seeds have not only seen technological breakthroughs, but the mechanized harvesting of long-staple cotton has also made great progress.

Long-staple cotton, highly valued for its longer fibers, is one of the world's finest cottons, with a silk-like luster and a cashmere-like feel. But mechanical harvesting of long-staple cotton used to be inefficient due to the low position of fruiting branches, necessitating manual picking.

Mechanical harvesting requires at least a 15-cm node height of the first fruiting branch above the ground. The height of previous long-staple cotton varieties was only about 9 cm, explained Tian Liwen, a researcher at the Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

After nearly a decade of research by the academy's institute of economic crops, the "Xin 78" variety, developed for mechanized harvesting, achieved full mechanized harvesting in 2021 with a yield of 511.5 kg per mu. It has since become the leading variety of long-staple cotton in Xinjiang.

The new variety has not only extended the node height to 17 cm, but also addressed other issues associated with old varieties — such as small cotton bolls, large leaves and poor response to defoliant sprays, that may affect output, Tian added.