Crops Cotton (Gossypium spp.)

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Common Name	COTTON
Latin binomial	Gossypium spp.
Plant family	Malvaceae
Names in other languages	cottonier (F), baumwollbaum (D), algodonero (E)

Cotton provides about 50 percent of the world's textile fibre. The fibres are the outer covering of the seeds, which themselves yield a valuable oil, used for the production of cooking oil or margarine or as a constituent of animal feeds. Cottons originate from tropical areas of Africa, Asia, America and Australasia and perform best in or near the tropics, but some have been grown for many years in Southern areas of Europe, principally the Balkans and Spain. European production (and the great majority of the remainder) now comes from G. hirsutum, the American upland cotton: during recent years, Spanish production has declined, but the area grown in Greece has increased towards 400,000 ha annually, encouraged at first by the formation of co-operatives which encouraged mechanisation and later by CAP support after accession to the EU.

This entry forms part of the publication Crops for Industry and Energy in Europe

References:

Langer, R H M & Hill, G D (1991) Agricultural Plants (2nd Edn) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Miles, L (1986) Focus on Cotton. Hove: Wayland (Publishers) Ltd.

Munro, J M (1987) Cotton (2nd Edn). Tropical Agriculture Series. Harlow: Longman Scientific and Technical.

Perry, F (1972) Flowers of the World. London: Hamlyn Press.

Salunkhe, D K, Chaven, J K, Adsule, R N & Kadam, S S (1992) World Oilseeds: Chemistry Technology and Utilisation. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Sauer, J D (1994) Historical Geography of Crop Plants: a Select Roster. Boca Raton: CRC Press.