Pricing Cotton on the Basis of Rapid Instrument Based Testing in India

cotton at the farmers ’ level. The traders do subjective evaluation of the quality of lint and ginning percentage, based on which a price is quoted. Some of the traders are themselves ginners. In such cases, they gin the cotton and the lint is then traded, again mostly based on subjective evaluation. Traders without ginnery get the kapas ginned and the lint obtained mostly in the form of bales is then traded further based on subjective evaluation of lint quality. More recently, with the intervention of Cotton Corporation of India (CCI), a public sector undertaking of the Govt. of India, trading in cotton is slowly moving towards values of fibre attributes as measured by instruments, i.e., based on objective evaluation of fibre properties. About 90 % of the cotton produced in India is converted into yarn of optimum count. Naturally, price of cotton is linked to the quality of yarn that can be produced from it, and therefore, price of yarn one is expected to get in the market. Yarn price is mainly dependent on the count. The finer the count, the higher is the yarn price. Yarn quality in turn depends on the fibre properties. In majority of the trade transactions, a grader subjectively evaluates fibr