Seed-cotton arrivals at Sindh ginneries have registered a record increase of 101 percent against corresponding period of last year, according to statistics released by crop monitoring cell.
The Extension people are optimistic that the cotton crop may surpass the production of last year despite extreme shortage of water. They said that picking has been started in all cotton growing districts of the province.
Cotton experts attribute the high seed-cotton arrivals due to heat wave recording 41 degrees Celsius temperature which forced the opening of bolls which might have negative impact on quality, staple length, and ginning out-turn. They said that in the next few days when climatic conditions would change to low temperature, especially during night, the phutti (seed-cotton) arrivals would decline to a great extent.
They further said that the heat wave with high velocity winds would lead to high degree of evaporation resulting in physiological disorder of the plant (reddening) in Nawabshah, Nausehero Feroze and Sanghar districts and, in patches, in Mirpurkhas and Sanghar districts.
The maintained that if the crop constantly would remain under stress of water shortage it might adversely affect its per hectare yield, but since the area under crop has been increased there is every likelihood that production would surpass the target fixed by the FAC at 2.4 million bales in the province.
Following are comparative figures of arrivals(maunds)
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2004-05 2003-04 %
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S-cotton arrivals at ginneries 5409394 2691002 +101
Seed cotton exported to Punjab 1,84460 158843 +15
Total arrivals 55,93854 29,49,845 +9
Total cotton ginned 28,47,758 21,88,676 +30
Bales pressed 327578 190185 +72
Bales sold 316064 178559 +77
Bales in balance 11514 11586 +0.52
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