to the high temperatures experienced in the space between the soil
and the film (Table 2).
The film above emerged cotton seedlings was slit on 10
November (5 Days after Planting, DAP) in an attempt to promote
their survival, while the section above the temperature sensors was
not slit to allow monitoring to continue. However, by this stage the
emerged cotton had desiccated and did not survive, resulting in
no lint yield data being recorded for experiment 1. Slitting of the
film resulted in accelerated breakdown of the film as wind caused
shredding of the edges. This meant that no observations on how
the brittleness of the film developed were possible as the exposed
edges of the film were already torn into strips. Degradation of the
film tended to be relatively rapid with most surface film having disappeared by 14 December 2009 (34 days). Sub-surface samples of
plastic film were collected until picking of cotton. A general observation when collecting the sub-surface samples was that the film
while maintaining integrity was weaker and tore more easily at
each subsequent sampling time.