Development of the Cotton Fiber

This chapter discusses the various facets of cotton-fiber development and focuses on some currently critical areas of investigation. In addition to its commercial importance, cotton fiber has several attributes that make it an experimental system of choice for the investigation of physiological and biochemical changes accompanying cell elongation and/or maturation. The fiber originates and ends as a single cell, and thus elongation can be studied free of any complications from cell division. The variability in fiber length and secondary wall thickness of fibers among different cotton varieties depends upon the interplay of a complex pattern of metabolic processes and regulating mechanisms that govern fiber growth. The in vitro methodology of cotton ovule culture holds considerable promise for investigating the effects of a number of plant growth substances on cell growth. The developing cotton fibers provide a rich source of homogeneous single cells, which should be preferred for structural and biosynthetic studies of the cell wall.