Study to relate mini-spun yarn tenacity with cotton fiber strength

There has been great interest in assessing yarn tenacity directly from available cotton fiber property data acquired by various means, including high-volume instrumentation (HVI). The HVI test is a primary and routine measurement providing fiber properties to cotton researchers. Knowledge about yarn tenacity within a cotton cultivar or between cultivars could be useful with regard to understanding the selection of cotton cultivars. This study examined the effect of cotton growth location, crop year, and cultivar on three relationships (fiber strength versus fiber micronaire, yarn tenacity versus fiber micronaire, and fiber strength versus yarn tenacity), and found great variations in the Pearson correlation and the gradients of respective regression lines. Instead of developing linear regression models from HVI fiber properties to predict yarn tenacity, this study applied a simple ratio method (i.e. normalized fiber strength or yarn tenacity against five HVI fiber properties) to relate fiber strength with yarn tenacity. The short fiber index was found to have a greater effect on the correlation between modified yarn tenacity and modified fiber strength than micronaire, yellowness, upper-half mean length, or uniformity index. This result implied the feasibility of utilizing HVI fiber short fiber index and strength data, as a semiquantitative and fast approach, to compare yarn tenacity performance within a cotton cultivar or between cultivars.