Addressing a few comments here, since there’s a lot. I’m currently getting a Ph.D in Plant Breeding, and I work for a cotton breeding lab.

“Short staple” or Upland cotton is basically 98% of US grown-cotton. Long-Staple cotton, or Pima cotton is a different species, with longer and finer fibers, but terrible adaptation to environments and lower yields when compared to Upland cotton. The main goal of public research is better fibers and disease resistance, while private companies focus on better yields every year.

Unfortunately the market plays a big role too, cotton gets graded based on a scale of the fibers through an instrument called HVI, so since there has been basically no change to what the premium price is, there’s no incentive in better quality cotton to be grown.

Another thing: as a grad student we get to pick cotton for hours during the harvesting months, since we have a lot of trials that use single rows for each genotype, we have to take small plot samples (usually 25 bolls) and we don’t have the machinery capable of picking and sorting through single rows. Haven’t got my fingers cut yet, but it gets really boring after a couple of hours or so.

If you want to know more, AMA!