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Improving the yield of lint is the main objective for most of the cotton crop improvement programs throughout the world as it meets the demand of fiber for textile industries. In the current study, 96 genotypes of Gossypium hirsutum were used to find novel simple sequence repeat marker-based associations for lint yield contributing traits by linkage disequilibrium. Extensive phenotyping of 96 genotypes for various agronomic traits was done for two consecutive years (2018 and 2019) in early, normal, and late sown environments. Out of 168 SSR markers screened over the 96 genotypes, a total of 97 polymorphic markers containing 293 alleles were used for analysis. Three different models, i.e., mixed linear model (MLM), compressed mixed linear model (CMLM), and multiple locus mixed linear model (MLMM), were used to detect the significant marker–trait associations for six different environments separately. A total of 38 significant marker–trait associations that were common to at least two environments were considered as promising associations and detailed annotation of the significant markers has been carried out. Twenty-two marker–trait associations were found to be novel in the current study. These results will be very useful for crop improvement programs using marker-assisted cotton breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present investigation was carried out during 2015 and 2016 at Research Farm of Cotton Section, Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar to study the impact of weather parameters on seed development in desi cotton under varying environmental conditions. The experiment was comprised of three varieties of desi cotton namely, HD 123, HD 324 and HD 432 planted under three environmental conditions (early, normal and late sown).The results revealed that seed development as indicated by germination, protein content, gossypol content and seed vigour was affected significantly by delayed sowing. The seed quality parameters of April sown cotton crop were maximum except gossypol content. The cotton seed of variety HD 432 recorded the highest seed vigour and germination (54.49%) while the lowest values were observed in cotton seed of variety HD 123 (49.5%). Cotton seed vigour development was correlated with weather parameters prevailed during seed development phase pooled for both seasons. Weather factors and thermal indices had positive correlation with seed vigour protein content and germination except maximum temperature which was negatively associated whereas this response was reverse in case of gossypol content of cotton seeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]