Productive and nutritional traits of recent released varieties of cotton grown in Southern Italy

The aim of the present work was to evaluate productive traits andoil content of 15 recent released varieties of cotton for a possiblereintroduction in the cropping systems of Southern Italy and usethe seed as ingredient in animal feeding. The trial was carriedout in 2011 in Gela Plain on a clay soil on 14 varieties ofGossipium hirsutum and 1 hybrid of Gossipium barbadense (5A)adopting a randomised block design with three replications.Sowing was performed on the 6th of May with a plant density of12 plants m-2. The fatty acids methyl esters (FAMEs) were analyzedby GC-FID. Individual fatty acids were expressed ing 100 g-1 of the total fatty acid methyl esters identified. All datawere submitted to one-way ANOVA (percentage data were previouslyarcsine transformed) and Tukey’s HSD was adopted as multiplecomparison test. Fibre yield was on average 1.05 t ha-1, witha group of seven varieties that showed the highest fibre production,among which emerged, ‘Elsa’ and ‘Claudia’ . As far seed production,the most productive varieties resulted ‘5A’ and ‘Elsa’,with a seed yield of 1.83 t ha-1, on average. Oil content was onaverage 18.5 g 100 g-1. Among the fatty acids of nutritional interest,results showed that the fatty acid profile was little influenced by varieties, less than the agronomic traits.