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Fiber length distribution variability in cotton bale classification: Interactions among length, maturity and fineness
Mourad Krifa Textile Research Journal 2012 82: 1244 originally published online 7 March 2012 DOI: 10.1177/0040517512438124 The online version of this article can be found at: http://trj.sagepub.com/content/82/12/1244

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Original article

Fiber length distribution variability in cotton bale classification: Interactions among length, maturity and fineness
Mourad Krifa

Textile Research Journal 82(12) 12441254 ! The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0040517512438124 trj.sagepub.com

Abstract Proper classification and bale selection are prerequisites to success in a modern cotton spinning operation. Currently, for crops where automatic High Volume Instrument (HVI) classification is the norm, fiber selection is done based on HVI data which does not include adequate characterization of fiber length distribution. This research evaluates the effectiveness of current cotton fiber classification and selection procedures in controlling for variability in fiber length distribution and presents a new approach to adequately clustering cotton bales into homogenous groups based on empirical length distributions. The results show that using the common HVI parameters to group the bales produces categories with uncontrolled length distribution variability. Differences in distribution patterns appeared related to the potential for bales with the same micronaire levels to differ significantly in maturity and thus in propensity to break.

Keywords cotton classification, fiber selection, length distribution, cluster analysis, cotton variability

Cotton ber traits are determined by complex interactions among genetic, environmental and processing conditions. Because of these interactions, ber properties vary signicantly at multiple levels, that is, between elds, between individual plants within elds, and even within single plants and on the same seed.13 Thus, the major challenge in cotton processing is to convert a highly variable raw material into a uniform product with quality that remains consistent over long production cycles. To address this challenge, it is critical that all the important ber properties be adequately measured, and that accepted cotton bale classing based on those measurements be made. Accordingly, cotton classing has historically had a vital impact not only on the economics of cotton production and marketing, but also on the eciency and the ultimate protability of the textile manufacturing operation. In fact, decision making in the cotton industry is often, if not always, based on categorizing or clustering cotton bales into relatively homogeneous quality groups using measured ber properties. Cotton classing has considerably changed with progress in ber quality measurement technology over several decades. Early graders manually and visually

classied cotton according to grade, staple length and character.4 The development of technology that enabled automatic and rapid measurement of micronaire, color, then length, strength and trash, led to the current classication system based on High Volume Instruments or HVI.5 With the widespread adoption of quality measurement and classication technology and thus the availability of ber information, cotton bale selection and laydown arrangement systems have evolved from the reliance on skills and experience of spinners to highly sophisticated information management and engineered decision-making tools.6 In order to optimally use this information in ber selection, signicant research eorts have been

Department of Textiles and Apparel, The University of Texas at Austin, USA Corresponding author: Mourad Krifa, Department of Textiles and Apparel, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A2700, Austin, Texas 78712, USA Email: Mourad.krifa@austin.utexas.edu

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Krifa accomplished and various approaches have been developed over decades. For instance, the concept of Engineered Fiber Selection or EFS was rst developed by Cotton Incorporated in the late seventies.79 El Mogahzy10 proposed a linear programming approach to optimize cotton purchase and planning decisions, and to control warehouse inventory based on HVI data. Later research went beyond purchase and inventory management to integrate bale picking for laydown mix selection.11 The various bale picking schemes in use today are based on correctly and eciently clustering the population of bales into homogeneous groups with respect to selected ber characteristics. Those properties are limited to the major parameters available through HVI testing (i.e. micronaire, length, strength, and sometimes other characteristics such as color).12 Micronaire is typically considered as a primary crite rion in view of the major problems such as fabric barre or color shade dierences that inconsistent micronaire can entail.13 Staple length is often the next essential criterion when mixing laydowns; although in more general terms, ber properties may vary in importance according to technology and end use. Since the establishment in 1991 of 100% classication by HVI in all USDA classing oces, and over the following decade, the widespread adoption of HVI by spinning mills the world over,14 little has changed in the fundamentals of the classing system. In an attempt to simplify the selection process by aggregating multiple criteria, complex indices such as the ber quality index (FQI), the spinning consistency index (SCI), or the premium/discount index (PDI) have been developed based on combinations of ber properties and on regression models.1517 Those indices often depend on the range of bales used to develop the equations and are not readily generalizable to characterize the complex multivariate nature of cotton ber quality. In addition, those indices consist of linear combinations of the same HVI parameters discussed above and thus, fundamentally, they convey the same set of information with the same shortcomings. In particular, despite intensive research and development eorts, classing data still fails to include meaningful and reliable measurements of some ber properties now at the forefront of concerns for spinners, namely, neps18 and short bers or more generally ber length distribution.19,20 To evaluate those properties, spinners depend on measurement methods with testing speeds not compatible with those of HVIs. The Advanced Fiber Information System, or USTER AFIS, is one such method where bers are individualized using an aeromechanical opener/separator, then individually conveyed through a set of optical sensors which generate electrical signals proportional to ber length and other dimensions.21,22

1245 Thus, the criteria used as input to control the blends that feed the spinning mill are exclusively based on HVI measurements, while the spinners quality concerns at the output of the mixing line are increasingly geared toward parameters that cannot be measured using HVIs, namely neps, short ber content or ber length distribution.19,23,24 More generally and beyond ber length, the intrinsic variability of all ber properties (within cottons/bales) is not taken into account during ber selection and laydown arrangement. In practice, each bale is identied by the average values of its HVI ber characteristics. Information about within-bale variability or about distributions of individual ber characteristics is usually unavailable at the laydown constitution stage. The absence of this information from HVI classing data means that critical ber properties are not taken into account in the ber selection and laydown constitution process. This may lead to unpredictable changes in within-laydown variability which can be rather detrimental,25 unless the current procedures would allow an indirect control of this variability. For instance, if those properties can be predicted using HVI parameters, the current ber selection practices may have the potential to control for their variability in the laydown. However, this assumption remains to be veried because it is unclear whether controlling micronaire, length, length uniformity and bundle strength is sucient to control variability in properties such as ber length distribution. Indeed, ber length distribution patterns typically show complex features and are therefore dicult to classify using parameters such as mean values.19,24 The research reported in this paper aims at testing the aforementioned assumption with a focus on ber length distribution. We examine the performance of HVI parameters as criteria for clustering cottons into homogenous distribution patterns and present a new approach to classifying cotton bales using empirical distributions of ber properties.

Materials and methods

A total of 172 commercial US upland cotton bales with a wide range of ber properties were included in this study. To ensure the representativeness of the ber property measurements, each bale was divided into 10 layers and ber samples were collected from each layer for testing on HVI (High Volume Instrument, four replications for micronaire, four for color, and 10 for length and strength) and AFIS (Advanced Fiber Information System, three replications of 3000 bers each). All testing was done after proper conditioning (65% RH, 21 C). Testing instrument calibration was checked daily using standard cottons and proper daily maintenance and monitoring procedures ensured

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Table 1. Main fiber properties of the selected bales (HVI and AFIS measurements on raw cotton) Fiber properties HVI Micronaire Upper Half Mean Length (UHML, mm) Length uniformity (%) Strength (g/tex) AFIS Mean length by number (Ln, mm) Short Fiber Content by number (SFCn, %) Upper Quartile Length by weight (UQLw, mm) Maturity ratio (MR) Fineness (mtex) Min. Max. Average

Textile Research Journal 82(12) the STATISTICA Data Miner program27 to classify the bales into homogenous groups by minimizing the within-group distances in the respective criteria taken simultaneously. The analysis was conducted using the Generalized EM and K-Means Cluster Analysis tool which allows for an a-priori unknown number of clusters (k) and estimates k from the data using the v-fold cross-validation algorithm.27 Thus, the analysis generates an estimate of the number of clusters (k) from the data, then partitions the observations into the k clusters that minimize the distances or dissimilarities between observations within clusters, and maximize the distance between clusters. Each cluster is characterized by its centroid (the vector of means for the continuous variables or criteria27). The dissimilarities between clusters and between observations within clusters are estimated using the squared Euclidean distance between centroids or, respectively, between each observation and its cluster centroid in the multidimensional space constituted by the classication criteria. For instance, in the cluster analysis using HVI properties as criteria, micronaire, UHML, uniformity and strength constitute a fourdimensional space. The number of clusters was estimated based on the empirical histogram data. With each set of classication criteria, length distribution data of the bales partitioned into groups was used to estimate a length distribution centroid, and then squared Euclidean distance between each bale and the corresponding cluster centroid was calculated to estimate the dissimilarity in length distribution patterns within clusters. Likewise, the centroid distributions were used to calculate the distances between clusters.

2.3 24.2 78.0 21.7 14.5 19.7 28.3 0.73 142

5.1 31.4 85.1 35.5 22.4 45.1 37.8 0.95 184

4.0 28.3 81.8 29.1 18.8 29.5 33.6 0.86 163

reliability of all instruments.26 Table 1 contains a summary of the properties of the selected cottons and shows the wide range achieved in all variables. In addition to the summary parameters, empirical histograms for length, neness and maturity were retrieved from the AFIS test. Averages per bale for all HVI and AFIS parameters, as well as for length distribution histograms were derived to fully characterize each bale. Using the data collected, we evaluated bale classication using clustering techniques based on three sets of criteria: 1. The usual HVI parameters using average values per bale; the parameters considered were micronaire, Upper Half Mean Length (UHML), length uniformity index, and bundle strength (this corresponds to the set of criteria used in common practice). 2. AFIS length parameters using average values per bale of the mean length by number (Ln), the 5th length percentile, as well as dispersion parameters, namely length CV% by number (LnCV%), and short ber content (SFCn%). 3. Empirical histograms of individual ber length using the average histogram per bale. Clustering the bales based on the empirical distribution is considered the reference ranking in this analysis since the criteria used constitute the most complete information available about individual ber properties, which should yield the highest possible homogeneity within quality groups.

Results and discussions

As mentioned above, the classication of the bales using the empirical histograms of the ber length distributions was considered the reference ranking in this analysis. To derive this classication, the frequencies observed for each length bin were used as classication criteria in the k-means cluster analysis. The number of clusters estimated using the cross-validation algorithm as discussed above was ve. Thus, both HVI and AFIS data were used to cluster the bales into ve homogenous quality groups. We rst examine the reference classication obtained with the individual ber length distributions, then discuss the clusters derived with the commonly used HVI properties.

Bale classification using empirical histograms of individual fiber length

Figure 1 depicts the observed probability density traces of the individual bales classied into homogenous

With each of the sets of criteria above as dimensions, we used the k-Means clustering algorithm available in

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0.09 0.08 0.07

(a)

(d)

Probability

0.06 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.01 0 0.09 0.08 0.07

(b)

(e)

Probability

0.06 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.01 0

0.09 0.08 0.07

10

20

30

40

50

60

(c)

Length (mm)

Probability

0.06 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.01 0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

X = 30 mm Individual bales Cluster centroids

Length (mm)

Figure 1. Probability density traces of the 172 bales categorized into five clusters using empirical length histograms.

groups using the k-means cluster analysis with length histograms as classication criteria. The density traces for the individual bales are shown in ne gray lines. The density trace shown in bold broken line represents the centroid for the corresponding cluster. The broken vertical line at x 30 mm was added to emphasize the relative positioning of the ve clusters on the length axis. The plots generated for the ve groups show distinct patterns across clusters with relatively homogenous distribution shapes within clusters. Therefore, using the

k-means clustering approach and the observed length distribution data, it was possible to automatically and quickly classify a sizeable number of cotton bales into groups with homogenous distribution patterns. Observed cotton ber length distribution patterns result from a combination of intrinsic (genetic and environmental) and processing factors. Mechanical damage in cotton ber processing, both shifts the ber length distribution and alters its shape. As a result of these interactions, the distributions exhibit complex, often bimodal, patterns which depend on the degree of ber

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5.0

30

4.5

29

4.0

Staple Length (mm)

A B E

Micronaire

28

3.5

27

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2.5 C D 83.5 83.0

25 A 31 30 B C D E

Length uniformity index (%)

82.0 81.5 81.0 80.5 80.0 79.5 79.0 A B C D E

Bundle strength (g/tex)

82.5

29 28 27 26 25 24 23 A B C D E

Figure 2. Variation of HVI fiber properties among length distribution pattern clusters. (Vertical bars denote +/ standard errors.).

damage undergone by the cotton.19,24,28 With such complex shapes, the summary statistics typically used to describe ber length (means, percentiles, short ber content. . .) are not representative of the distribution, and cannot be used to classify cottons into groups with similar distribution patterns. Thus, the common way to compare and classify samples with varied degrees of ber damage into groups with similar distribution shapes is to visually examine the empirical length histograms. However, this can only be done with a limited number of samples and cannot be practically applied when dealing with hundreds or thousands of bales to constitute laydowns, or when analyzing hundreds of samples to select genotypes in breeding programs. The approach we show above overcomes this problem and allows the automatic and quick classication of a large number of samples into groups with similar distribution patterns. The distribution groups, shown in Figure 1, dier in both shape and position on the length axis, which, as indicated above, corresponds to both intrinsic and process-related sources of variability. We have sorted the ve groups on Figure 1 (from A to E) by order of

increasing ber damage according to the characteristic distribution shapes.19 In particular, clusters A, B, and C (Figure 1) show a clear bimodal shape with a peak in the range of very short bers (x < 5 mm), and another distinct peak in the length categories between 20 and 30 mm. This pattern is characteristic of an intermediate stage of ber breakage process typically seen in raw cotton that underwent some degree of mechanical aggressiveness in ginning and lint cleaning.19,28 Clusters D and E (Figure 1) on the other hand, still exhibit the peak at x < 5 mm, but the peak at the longer ber categories appears to dissipate gradually and to almost completely disappear for cluster E. This pattern is indicative of a more advanced breakage process, where bers shift from the longer length categories to those closer to the origin of the length axis, and thus the dip between the two peaks apparent at the lower damage levels disappears as damage increases.19,28 Figure 2 summarizes the major HVI ber properties (i.e. micronaire, staples length, length uniformity and strength), observed for each of the ve bale clusters discussed above. The results show that the clusters, based on the observed length distribution, dier

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Table 2. Cluster means for micronaire, staple length (mm), length uniformity index (%), and bundle strength (g/tex) Cluster HVI-1 HVI-2 HVI-3 HVI-4 HVI-5 Micronaire 2.7 3.5 3.8 4.1 4.5 UHM length (mm) 26.8 28.8 25.4 29.9 27.6 Uniformity index (%) 79.3 81.3 80.5 82.9 82.0 Strength (g/tex) 24.4 27.8 26.0 30.9 29.3 Number of bales 9 42 13 52 56 Percentage (%) 5.2 24.4 7.6 30.2 32.6

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Table 3. Cluster means for AFIS mean length by number (Ln), length CV%, and length 5th percentile (Pc5.0) Cluster AF-1 AF-2 AF-3 AF-4 AF-5 Ln (mm) 16.09 17.69 18.55 19.77 20.45 LnCV(%) 56.0 52.6 55.3 47.6 51.6 SFCn(%) 38.0 31.5 31.8 23.9 26.0 Pc5.0 (mm) 30.2 31.5 34.3 32.8 35.9 Number of cases 18 25 56 31 42 Percentage (%) 10.5 14.5 32.6 18.0 24.4

signicantly in HVI ber properties, with exception made of the fact that clusters A and B have equal ber strength values. Those two clusters, seen above as having a distribution pattern characteristic of lowintermediate degree of ber damage, appear to be constituted of the strongest bales (average strength is 30.2 g/tex), and are characterized by the two highest micronaire levels, respectively 4.2 and 4.6 (Figure 2). At the other end of the spectrum, cluster E shows the lowest micronaire (2.9) and strength (24.6 g/tex), and as discussed above, the length distribution pattern with the most advanced ber damage level. Overall, the different distribution shapes seen across the ve groups of bales correspond to dierent degrees of damage that can be caused by variations in upstream processing conditions (mechanical aggressiveness in ginning and lint cleaning) or variations in the cottons propensity to break, which was shown to depend on ber maturity and strength.19,24 For instance, the distribution shape seen in cluster E (Figure 1) is distinctive of immatureweak cotton that reached a degree of extensive ber damage even at the bale stage. Therefore, the k-means clustering approach using observed length distributions allowed the classication of the tested cotton bale population into homogenous groups. The various distribution patterns observed for those groups appear to be representative of varying degrees of ber damage. Because of the close relationship between ber

damage and maturity and strength,19,24 clustering the cotton bales into homogenous groups according to length distribution patterns shows the potential of eectively discriminating between cottons with diering micronaire and strength levels.

Parametric classification using HVI and AFIS statistics

In addition to the classication discussed above, both HVI and AFIS parameters were used to cluster the bales into ve homogenous quality groups. HVI classication constituted bale clusters based on micronaire, UHML, length uniformity index, and bundle strength. AFIS classication was based on four length parameters by number (mean length, length CV%, length 5th percentile, and short ber content19). The clustering technique was similar to above; the analysis constituted ve groups that minimized the within-group and maximized the between-group variability in the selected classication criteria. Table 2 summarizes mean values of micronaire, UHML (mm), length uniformity index (%) and strength (g/tex) for the ve bale groupings constituted based on the four HVI criteria. The clusters are shown in Table 2 by increasing micronaire value. The cluster mean values and associated standard deviations showed signicant dierences between clusters in each of the four HVI ber properties.

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0.5 Distance Ratio (between/within clusters)

0.45

0.4

0.35

0.3

0.25

0.2 HVI AFIS (Ln) Empirical histogram

Figure 3. Between-/within-cluster ratio of Euclidian distance (distribution dissimilarity) based on the three sets of criteria.

Table 3 summarizes the data observed for each of the ve clusters obtained with the four AFIS length parameters. Overall, the clusters exhibit sizably dierent mean values in each criterion with the exception made of the comparable short ber content in the groups labeled AF-2 and AF-3. We now examine the three classications obtained above and compare the performance of each set of criteria in adequately grouping the bales, that is, in producing distinct and homogenous clusters that minimize the within-group variability and maximize the betweengroup variability.

Figure 4. Variability chart for length distribution pattern dissimilarity within HVI clusters (squared Euclidean distance).

Classification performance
As mentioned in the methods section, the dissimilarity of the distribution patterns within clusters was estimated using the squared Euclidean distances between the length distributions of individual bales and the corresponding cluster centroid. Respectively, the dissimilarity of the distribution patterns between clusters was estimated using the squared Euclidean distances between cluster centroids. This was done for each of the three classications discussed above, namely, the classication based on the empirical histograms and the two parametric classications based on HVI and AFIS parameters. The squared Euclidean distance results were used to calculate the ratio of total between-cluster over the total within-cluster variability of distribution patterns for each of the three classications. Based on the discussion above, this ratio measures the classication performance because the higher it is, the more distinct and homogenous the clusters are. Figure 3 shows the ratios so obtained for the three classications.

It is apparent that as expected, the criteria based on the empirical histograms produce the classication with the highest ratio. The classication based on AFIS parameters produces the middle ratio while the one based on HVI parameters produces the lowest ratio. This indicates that as we move from the empirical histogram to the parameters used in the industry to classify cotton bales, the probability to obtain bale categories with heterogeneous distribution patterns increases. To scrutinize this observation in more depth, we examine the detail of the distances obtained for the individual bales partitioned into the ve clusters using HVI parameters. The results of this analysis are shown on Figure 4 where both individual values (upper plot) and standard deviations (lower plot) of the squared Euclidean distances are plotted against the ve HVI groups (HVI-1 to -5). The results in Figure 4 show a high dispersion of the Euclidean distance for the clusters with high micronaire levels (cluster HVI-5 and to some extent cluster HVI-4 which has two bales with extreme length distribution dissimilarity in comparison to the cluster centroid). These results indicate that the clustering of the bales based on HVI parameters resulted in some groups of bales with relatively heterogeneous length distribution patterns. The heterogeneity within groupings appears to be higher for the categories with high micronaire levels. The practical implication of the observation made above is that in constituting the spinning laydowns

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1251 that typically correspond to cottons with dierent degrees of ber damage, (i.e. dierent propensities to break and/or processing history).19 Those bales were classied in dierent clusters when using the empirical histograms as criteria but were attributed to the same groups when HVI parameters were used as criteria. This result is indicative of the fact that the four major HVI ber properties are not sucient to predict length distribution patterns since cotton bales having similar HVI measurements may have very distinct length distributions. The bales depicted in Figure 5 are just examples among about 39 bales (or 23% of all tested bales) that appeared to be misclassied based on HVI data. In order to identify the factors impacting this misclassication, we examined the combinations of ber properties of pairs of bales that had comparable HVI properties but exhibited signicantly dierent distribution patterns (similar to the cases illustrated in Figure 5). A particular emphasis was placed on those ber characteristics that are known to impact the cottons propensity to break and thus length distribution pattern, which include ber maturity.19,24 Figure 6 depicts the relationship between micronaire and the two ber maturity parameters measured using the AFIS (i.e. the immature ber content (IFC %) and maturity ratio) for the bale clusters exhibiting misclassied bales with HVI. The pairs of bales with similar HVI properties but distinct length distribution patterns are represented using two dierent point markers depending on the distributions positioning relative to the respective clusters centroid. Bales with distributions at the left of the centroid, that is those having degraded length with relatively extensive ber damage (e.g. bales #30 and #12 in Figure 5), are shown in bold dark dots. Bales with distribution at the right of the centroid (i.e. with a lower degree of ber damage), are shown with asterisk point markers. Two curves (dotted lines) were added to the scatter plots to outline each of the two groups of bales. The rest of the bales are shown in gray circle markers. It can be seen from Figure 6 that the two groups correspond to pairs of bales having two levels of maturity for the same micronaire values. The samples with degraded length distributions are those that have a higher IFC% and a lower maturity ratio, while the bales with a lower degree of damage have a lower IFC% and a higher maturity ratio for the same micronaire levels. It appears therefore that the misclassication of some of the bales based on HVI parameters is related to the fact that bales having the same micronaire may correspond to dierent maturity levels, given the nature of micronaire as a complex measure of both maturity and neness. Thus bales having the same micronaire (i.e. classied in the same HVI categories),

(a) 0.09 0.08 0.07 0.06 Probability 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.01 0 (b) 0.09 0.08 0.07 0.06 Probability 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.01 0 0 20 Length (mm) 40 60
Bale#30 Bale#75 Cluster centroid Bale#12 Bale#121 Cluster centroid

Figure 5. Length distribution pattern variability within clusters HVI-4 (a) and HVI-5 (b).

based solely on HVI data, bales with dissimilar length distribution patterns could be substituted for each other (being from the same category) and could therefore result in variability between laydowns that remains unaccounted for. In the particular case of the population we tested, bales within the 4.1 and 4.5 micronaire categories (see Table 2) could be considered essentially identical because of having similar HVI properties, but may represent signicant variability in length distribution. An illustrative example of this variability in each of the two groups of bales is shown in Figure 5. For each group, we plotted length distribution density traces for two bales showing high Euclidean distance from the clusters centroid (shown in broken bold line). In both cases shown in Figure 5, the distribution patterns are dierent and exhibit distinct shape features

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(a) 13
12
Bales with length distributions left of centroid Bales with length distributions right of centroid

Immature Fiber Content (IFC%)

11 10 9 8 7 6 5

(b) 0.96
0.94 0.92 0.90 0.88 0.86 0.84 0.82 0.80 0.78 3.6

Maturity ratio

3.8

4.0

4.2

4.4

4.6

4.8

5.0

Micronaire

Figure 6. Relationship between micronaire and maturity parameters; (a) Immature Fiber Content (IFC%), and (b) Maturity ratio. Bales showing extreme length distribution patterns within clusters are shown in distinct point markers.

but having dierent maturity levels will ultimately lead to the high variability in ber length distribution as illustrated in Figure 5.

Conclusions
In order to test the eectiveness of current cotton ber classication and selection procedures in controlling for variability in ber length distribution, k-means cluster analysis was used to classify a broad range of 172 commercial cotton bales into homogenous quality groups based on three sets of classication criteria. The rst set of criteria consisted of the major HVI parameters commonly used in commercial classication and in ber selection in spinning operations; the parameters considered were micronaire, UHML (mm), length uniformity index (%) and bundle strength (g/tex). Another set of

criteria consisted of ber length parameters provided by the AFIS. In addition to those parametric criteria, a new approach based on empirical histograms of ber length distribution was also used. Using this new approach, it was possible to quickly classify a sizable number of cotton bales into groups with homogenous length distribution patterns which appeared representative of varying degrees of ber damage. Because of the impact of ber maturity and strength on the propensity to break, clustering the bales based on length distribution patterns resulted in groups with dierent micronaire and strength levels. A comparative analysis of the three approaches revealed that when classication was done using HVI properties only, approximately 23% of the bales appeared misclassied, (i.e. cottons with signicantly dierent length distributions were attributed to the

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Krifa same categories), which could result in undesirable laydown variability in critical properties such as short ber content. The examination of the interactions among ber properties indicated that the misclassication of those bales based on HVI parameters is related to the nature of micronaire as a complex measure of both maturity and neness. Therefore, bales having the same micronaire may correspond to dierent maturity levels, and given the link between maturity and ber damage, this can result in signicant variability in ber length distribution. This result underscores the need for, and the potential usefulness of high volume measurement tools that could provide separate determination of maturity and neness. The availability of such methods could prevent bale misclassications resulting from misinterpretation of micronaire values and thus ensure better control of the variability in ber length distribution. This research continues in order to quantify the potential impact of this variability on processing performance and, ultimately, on yarn quality, as well as to identify combinations of classication criteria that could help minimize variability within bale categories.

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Acknowledgements
This research was funded, in part, by the Food and Fibers Research Grant Program administered by the Texas Department of Agriculture (grant number FF-d1011-7) and by Cotton Inc., Texas State Support (grant number 11 813TX).

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