Lint Yield and Resistance to Pink Bollworm in Early‐maturing Cotton1

Moderately early maturing breeding stocks and cultivars of cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L., grown at Tempe, Ariz. in plots untreated with insecticide yielded slightly less to substantially more lint by mid‐September than long‐season cultivars did by mid‐October. Seed damage percentages caused by pink bollworm (PBW), Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders), were lower in the moderately early and the very early cottons than in the long‐season cultivars. The very early maturing cottons, however, had lower yield potential than the moderately early or long‐season ones. Because all cottons suffered losses in yield from PBW, earliness is viewed only as one factor in assisting cotton cultivars to escape damage. Earliness would have to be combined with other resistance characters to produce cultivars that possibly could be grown without protecting them from PBW damage with insecticide.