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.