The search for superior cotton fibres of the future: novel small scale tests needed today

Cotton is one of the most widely used natural fibres with very good overall properties. However, sustained, profitable cotton production suffers increasing pressure from the competition of synthetic fibres. To remain competitive on the market, it is necessary to direct the research towards the breakthrough technologies that are propelling this ancient crop into the high-tech world of tomorrow. The selection of the novel fibre types with the best performance in an early stage of this development process is very crucial and requires new test methods that can score new traits on a large number of small volume fibre samples. Therefore, it is essential to develop new methods or adapt existing ones and optimise them to be applicable on a few grams of fibre material. In the scope of this research 2 main fibre properties were chosen as focus aspects namely reactivity/dye ability and flame retardancy