Cotton species

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. There are 50 species of cotton in the genus Gossypium — basically they’re seeds with fibers attached. Only a few are commercially important. Geneticists have determined that the first cotton plant originated in Africa. Somehow seeds got dispersed across the oceans, two went to the Americas and one of those went back to African and came back again – with double chromosome counts. Those tetraploids are the source of upland cotton and pima cotton. Pima cotton has extra long and silky fibers but isn’t very productive and has special environmental requirements – historically it was grown on the sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia. Upland cotton is a great producer and adaptable. Ninety percent of cotton grown today is upland cotton and in our state we grow 500,000 bales a year.