Short Staple Cotton Advanced Strains Trial, Safford Agricultural Center, 1994

Twenty six short staple advanced strains/varieties were grown in a replicated field trial on the Safford Agricultural Center. SureGrow SGX247 was the highest yielding cultivar in the trial with a lint yield of 1628 pounds per acre. The exciting feature of this trial is that the top two swains exceeded the highest yield in the Regional variety trial by 100 to 150 pounds of lint. This is the first time that so many advanced strains were tested in a given year. The site at Safford gives cotton breeders an insight as to how their advanced strains or new varieties will perform in the high deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. HVI data for the varieties in the trial indicate that the average fiber length was greater than 1.11 inches and the average fiber strength was greater than 30 grams/tex