The commonly used Micronaire value for cotton is related to both fibre fineness (weight per unit length) and maturity. There is a need for a new measurement technique to separate these. This is of particular importance to the Australian industry where varieties of fine, mature cotton have the potential to be wrongfully discounted commercially if a low Micronaire value is taken as indicating immaturity.

The CRDC is currently funding research at CSIRO Textile and Fibre Technology aimed at developing techniques to measure fibre fineness and maturity to overcome this deficiency in the micronaire measurement.

One difficultly with research in this area is that there are no internationally recognised standard cotton samples that can be used for checking the accuracy of new measurement approaches or for that matter for checking the calibration and accuracy of existing instrumentation.

Researchers at USDA in New Orleans and Texas Tech. University have been tackling this problem by coordinating the development of a standardised set of cotton samples specifically for this purpose. The cottons in this set will each have well characterised values of both fibre fineness and maturity and the set will cover a wide commercial range in these parameter values. This set will then be of extensive value to the cotton community.

Utilising our expertise in measuring cotton fibre fineness and maturity, CSIRO Textile and Fibre Technology, has participated in these trials as an independent measurement test laboratory.