2. Methods
The CSIRO cotton breeding program in Australia has been
developing populations targeting high fibre quality from crosses
involving local germplasm but originating in part from US New
Mexico (NM) Acala (Constable et al., 2001).
In this program, populations
are screened for fibre quality at the individual plant stage
(usually F3) and selections from those are advanced to progeny
rows and screened again for quality and yield.
The selected material
then enters the replicated high quality experiments reported
in this paper. Depending on performance, these breeding lines will
either be discarded, be used as a parent and/or proceed for further
evaluation