Recently, China Fiber Inspection Bureau issued the 2015/2016 cotton quality analysis report of China (hereinafter referred to as the "report"). According to the report, all the quality indicators of the new cotton fine staple cotton in the year are good and bad. Natural conditions, industrial policies, market conditions and production links all affect cotton quality.

According to the national standard of GB 1103.1-2012 "first parts of cotton: sawtooth processing fine staple cotton", the relevant personnel summarized and counted the main indexes such as color level, mill quality, length, micron value, fracture strength and length uniformity index, and analyzed and evaluated the factors such as production, market and policy. The quality index data reported in the report are calculated on the basis of the notarial inspection data of the new cotton sawtooth processed cotton in the new year.

According to the data of the report, in the year of 2015/2016, there were 13 cotton producing provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) and the Xinjiang production and Construction Corps, involving 1100 processing enterprises, 28.66% less than the previous year, and 15 million 890 thousand tons of inspection packages, totaling 3 million 600 thousand tons, representing a decrease of 30.03% and 29.96% over the previous year, and the inspection volume was the lowest level in nearly 5 years.

According to the report, the quality of cotton new fine wool cotton has been good and bad in 2015/2016. Judging from the quality of color and rolling work, the color grade is mainly white cotton, and most of them are concentrated in white cotton grade 2 and white cotton grade 3 two. The quality of rolling mill is mainly in the middle range, and the proportion of intermediate and above reaches 96.35%. Length is one of the most important internal quality indicators of cotton, and is closely related to the overall use value of cotton. In 2015/2016, the average length of fiber decreased slightly, and the average length uniformity index increased significantly. From the internal quality of fiber, the two important quality indexes of micron value and fracture strength showed the opposite trend. Among them, the index of micron value decreased significantly, and the average breaking strength index increased significantly. Comparing the data from different provinces, Xinjiang cotton has the most outstanding performance. Compared with the previous year, the average length of cotton in Xinjiang decreased by 0.18 millimeters, the length uniformity was reduced by 0.03%, the percentage of micron A+B level decreased by 26.37 percentage points, the average breaking strength increased slightly, and the overall quality was slightly worse than that of 2014/2015.

The factors affecting the quality of cotton in this year mainly include natural conditions, industrial policies, market conditions, production links and so on. Take the industrial policy as an example, since the reform of cotton target price, the domestic cotton situation has undergone great changes. The cotton price is closer to the market, forcing the quality of cotton to improve. Cotton farmers and processing enterprises pay more attention to the internal quality of cotton. At the same time, cotton production is concentrated in advantageous producing areas (such as Xinjiang), which is more conducive to unified management, mechanical farming, pest control and acquisition processing and transportation, laying a solid foundation for specialization and modernization of cotton production. In the process of production, cotton variety selection, cultivation management and circulation, picking methods, and cotton processing all affect cotton quality.

In order to ensure the improvement of cotton processing quality, prevent the quality of cotton from being damaged during processing, protect the stability and consistency of cotton quality and improve the overall spinnability of cotton in China, the report puts forward 3 suggestions: first, to strengthen macro control and market guidance, and to enhance the quality awareness of cotton workers; two, to establish brands, increase support, and improve the competitiveness of high quality cotton market; three, standardize management, strengthen supervision, and enhance the quality level of cotton throughout the country.

(source: China Quality News)