Morpho-physiological and fiber quality evaluation of cotton genotypes under normal sowing condition
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55627/zoobotanica.003.03.1706Keywords:
Biplot analysis, fiber quality, Gossypium hirsutum, heat map, physiological traitsAbstract
Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is a key fiber crop with significant economic importance, yet Pakistan has recently experienced declining production and yield. There is a need to evaluate cotton germplasm with enhanced yield and quality traits. For this purpose, 79 cotton genotypes were sown at the Cotton Research Station, Vehari under Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) to assess morphological, physiological, and fiber quality traits, including plant height, bolls per plant, sympodial branches, boll weight, ginning outturn, seed cotton yield, cell membrane thermostability, pollen viability, fiber length, fiber strength, and fineness. Significant phenotypic variation was observed among genotypes for most traits. Correlation and principal component analysis revealed strong positive associations among yield-related and physiological traits, while fiber quality traits clustered separately. Heat map and mean value analyses identified superior genotypes, with G5, G24, G32, G44, G46, G52, and G60 exhibiting the highest fiber strength and promising performance for seed cotton yield, pollen viability, and cell membrane thermostability. These genotypes constitute an important gene pool for breeding programs focused on improving yield, fiber quality, and heat stress tolerance in cotton. The study provides a foundation for selecting superior parents for future cotton improvement under normal and stress-prone environments.
References
Abro, S., Rizwan, M., Deho, Z.A., Abro, S.A. and Sial, M.A., (2022). Identification of heat tolerant cotton lines showing genetic variation in cell membrane thermostability, stomata, and trichome size and its effect on yield and fiber quality traits. Frontiers in Plant Science. 12 34-56.
Ahmed, A. I., Iqbal, K. A., Negm, M. A. M., Iqbal, R., Azhar, M. T., Khan, S. H., & Rana, I. A. (2024). Enhancing cotton resilience to challenging climates through genetic modifications. Journal of Cotton Research, (7), 10-19.
Anwar, M., & Saleem, M. A. (2024). Gene pyramiding improved cell membrane stability under heat stress in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.). BMC Plant Biology, 24, 886. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-024-05610-7
Arif, T., Chaudhary, M.T., Majeed, S., Rana, I.A., Ali, Z., Elansary, H.O., Moussa, I.M., Sun, S. and Azhar, M.T., (2023). Exploitation of various physio-morphological and biochemical traits for the identification of drought tolerant genotypes in cotton. BMC Plant Biology, 23(1), 508-519.
Bista, M.K., Kodadinne Narayana, N., Chakravaram, A., Pieralisi, B., Dhillon, J., Reddy, K.R. and Bheemanahalli, R., (2025). Intensifying heat stress impacts cotton flowering and boll development efficiency. BMC Plant Biology, 25(1), 984-998.
Dev, W., Sultana, F., He, S., Hu, D., Geng, X., Du, X. and Iqbal, B., (2025). Effects of High Temperatures on Pollen Germination and Physio‐Morphological Traits in Upland Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.). Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science, 211(4) 23-35.
Devi, P., Chaudhary, S., Bhardwaj, A., Priya, M., Jha, U., Pratap, A., Kumar, S., Bindumadahva, H., Singh, I., Singh, S. and Vara Prasad, P.V., (2023). Harnessing genetic variation in physiological and molecular traits to improve heat tolerance in food legumes. In Legumes: Physiology and Molecular Biology of Abiotic Stress Tolerance (pp. 27-69). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.
Farooq, A., Shakeel, A., Chattha, W.S., Khan, T.M., Azhar, M.T. and Saeed, A., (2021). Genetic variability in cotton germplasm: predicting the agro physiological markers for high-temperature tolerance. The Journal of Agricultural Science, 159(1-2), 11-22.
Farooq, A., Shakeel, A., Saeed, A., Farooq, J., Rizwan, M., Chattha, W. S., & Ramzan, Y. (2023). Genetic variability predicting breeding potential of upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) for high temperature tolerance. Journal of Cotton Research, 6(1), 7.
Hamidi, A., Bazdi, G. and Jafari, Y., (2018). Evaluation of Morphological Characteristics of Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) New Genotypes in Golestan Province. Journal of Crop Breeding, 10(27), 66-74.
Ijaz, A., Anwar, Z., Ali, A., Ditta, A., Shani, M. Y., Haidar, S. Khan, M. K. R. (2024). Unraveling the genetic and molecular basis of heat stress in cotton. Frontiers in Genetics, 15, 1296622.
Iqbal, A., Khan, I. A., & Sadaqat, H. A. (2008). Heat tolerance is variable in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) and can be exploited for breeding of better yielding cultivars under high temperature regimes. Pakistan Journal of Botany, 40(5), 2053-2058.
Iqbal, M., Ul-Allah, S., Naeem, M., Ijaz, M., Sattar, A. and Sher, A., (2017). Response of cotton genotypes to water and heat stress: from field to genes. Euphytica, 213(6), p.131.
Kumar, S., Jattan, M., Kumar, D., Sharma, A., Malik, K. S., Saini, A. K., & Mandhania, S. (2025). Genetic diversity in Bt-cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) genotypes for yield and fibre quality traits using multivariate analysis. Journal of Advances in Biology & Biotechnology, 28(6), 1081-1088.
Li, S., et al. (2019). Evaluation of the genetic diversity of fibre quality traits in upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.). Journal of Cotton Research, 1(4). 45-52.
Luqman, T., Hussain, M. and Khan, M.K.R. (2025). Harnessing multivariate insights coupled with susceptibility indices to reveal morpho-physiological and biochemical traits in heat tolerance of cotton. BMC Plant Biology, 25(1), 126-139.
Luqman, T., Hussain, M., Ahmed, S. R., Ijaz, I., Maryum, Z., Nadeem, S. Liu, Y. (2025). Cotton under heat stress: a comprehensive review of molecular breeding, genomics, and multi-omics strategies. Frontiers in Genetics. 23: 452-469.
Mahmood, A. (2025, January 4). Cotton production plunges over 33 pc – Pakistan. DAWN.com. https://www.dawn.com/news/1882981
Majeed, S., Chaudhary, M.T., Mubarik, M.S., Rana, I.A., Shaban, M., Tan, D.K., Jia, Y., Du, X., Hinze, L. and Azhar, M.T., (2024). Genetics of biochemical attributes regulating morpho-physiology of upland cotton under high temperature conditions. Journal of Cotton Research, 7(1), 3-15.
Malik, W., Ahmad, M. Q., Baig, M. M. A., Nauman, M., & Arshad, S. F. (2022). Progress and perspective on cotton breeding in Pakistan. Journal of Cotton Research, 5, 29-38.
Nortin J (1966) Testing of plum pollen viability with tetrazolium salts. Proc Am Soc Hortic Sci 89:132–134
Puppala, N., Nayak, S.N., Sanz-Saez, A., Chen, C., Devi, M.J., Nivedita, N., Bao, Y., He, G., Traore, S.M., Wright, D.A. and Pandey, M.K., (2023). Sustaining yield and nutritional quality of peanuts in harsh environments: Physiological and molecular basis of drought and heat stress tolerance. Frontiers in Genetics, 14, 112-146.
Rathod, V., Behera, T.K., Munshi, A.D., Durgesh, K., Jat, G.S., Krishnan, B.G. and Sharma, N., (2018). Pollen viability and in vitro pollen germination studies in Momordica species and their intra and interspecific hybrids. International Journal of Chem. Studies, 6(6). 32-40.
Rehman, A.U., Rana, I.A., Majeed, S., Chaudhary, M.T., Zulfiqar, M., Yang, S.H., Chung, G., Jia, Y., Du, X., Hinze, L. and Azhar, M.T., (2021). Intra-plant variability for heat tolerance related attributes in upland cotton. Agronomy, 11(12), p.2375.
Saleem, M. A., Malik, W., Ahmad, M. Q., Baig, M. M. A., Nauman, M., & Arshad, S. F. (2023). Identification of heat tolerant cotton lines showing genetic variation in cell membrane thermostability, stomata, and trichome size and its effect on yield and fibre quality traits. Plant Cell Reports. 23: 45-49.
Sarwar, M., Saleem, M.F., Ullah, N., Ali, A., Collins, B., Shahid, M., Munir, M.K., Chung, S.M. and Kumar, M., (2023). Superior leaf physiological performance contributes to sustaining the final yield of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) genotypes under terminal heat stress. Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants, 29(5), pp.739-753.
Shani, M.Y., Ditta, A. and Khan, M.K.R., (2025). Characterizing drought-resilient cotton genotypes through morpho-physiological and biochemical traits at flowering stage. BMC Plant Biology, 25(1), pp.1-22.
Side, T.H.R., Yamin, M., Mulyani, S., Qadri, S.N., Ayunawati, L. and Aji, A.P., (2025). Diversity and Selection of Cotton Germplasm Based on Morpho-Agronomic Character Performance. HAYATI Journal of Biosciences, 32(2), pp.341-355.
Steel RGD, JH Torrie, DA Dickey (1997). Principles and Procedures of Statistics - A Biometrical Approach, 3 rd edition, pp:204‒207. McGraw Hill Book International Co., Singapore
Wang, H., Cai, X., Umer, M.J., Xu, Y., Hou, Y., Zheng, J., Liu, F., Wang, K., Chen, M., Ma, S. and Yu, J., 2024. Genetic analysis of cotton fiber traits in Gossypium hybrid lines. Physiologia Plantarum, 176(4), p. e14442.
Yousaf, M.I., Hussain, Q., Alwahibi, M.S., Aslam, M.Z., Khalid, M.Z., Hussain, S., Zafar, A., Shah, S.A.S., Abbasi, A.M., Mehboob, A. and Riaz, M.W., 2023. Impact of heat stress on agro-morphological, physio-chemical and fiber related paramters in upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) genotypes. Journal of King Saud University-Science, 35(1), p.102379.
Zhang, J., Cheng, M., Cao, N., Li, Y., Wang, S., Zhou, Z. and Hu, W., (2023). Drought stress and high temperature affect the antioxidant metabolism of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) anthers and reduce pollen fertility. Agronomy, 13(10), p.2550.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Muhammad Tanees Chaudhary, Muhammad Jamil, Ghulam Sarwar, Shoaib Liaqat, Sabah Merrium, Muhammad Tehseen Azhar, Zeenat Javeed, Kamran Javed
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
