Short-Season Cotton: Mechanism of Early Maturity and its Cultivation

Short-season cotton varieties are characterized by a short period of growth and development, a rapid development process and relatively concentrated flowering and boll-setting. Consequently, short-season cotton can reach early maturity with late sowing. In this paper, the morphological characteristics as well as the physiological and molecular biological mechanisms of early maturity on short-season cotton are reviewed. The characteristics of short-season cotton with regard to optimizing planting patterns and methods, promoting cultivation of cotton in saline-alkaline fields, developing machine-harvested cotton and planting cotton without plastic mulching are also discussed. On the basis of these characteristics, future strategies are proposed for improving breeding and cultivation of short-season cotton.