Introductory Chapter: Global Cotton Research Development Trends for the Past Five Years – Key Directions

1. Introduction

Cotton, represented by more than 50 Gossypium species, is the world’s most important natural textile fiber crop. The cottonseed is an important source of feed, foodstuff, and oil. Because of the importance of this cash crop worldwide, it is very important to timely review the current state of advancement in cotton research for determining the development trends. For this purpose, I previously compiled two book volumes in the InTechOpen open-access publication platform on cotton research in 2014 and 2016 [1, 2]. Later, in 2018, Mehboob-Ur-Rahman and Zafar [3], and in 2020, Ansari [4] had compiled two other dedicated book volumes on the advancement of cotton research. All of these volumes highlighted the latest advancement in cotton investigations and covered periodical success in cotton science and farming. However, in recent years, we have witnessed that cotton research progressively has advanced over a decade to address the key challenges and limitations of cotton farming worldwide. Researchers have initiated largely coordinated multi-institutional research projects on cotton. These efforts have greatly accelerated cotton research globally to improve cotton production and farming [5].

2. Novel focuses

In recent years, cotton researchers have focused on cotton genetics/genomics and physiology, cotton germplasm collections and its biodiversity, traditional and molecular breeding for cultivar development, tagging important genes, whole-genome sequencing, genome-wide marker-trait association, transcriptome and proteome analyses useful for new-generation superior biotechnology crops, transgenic and new-generation gene-editing technologies, including CRISPR/Cas9. Cotton crop physiology in a complex view from seed germination to maturation stages under different temperatures, water, light, and nutrient applications [5] has been the key propriety and under the targeted focus of the world research community.

Efforts on novel and emerging innovations and game-changing technologies are ongoing to address current cotton farming limitations and for the effective management of sustainable cotton agriculture. These include but are not limited to virtual breeding, bioinformatics, smart communication and mobile phone technologies, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality-based applications helping cotton breeding and farming in the era of climate change and technological advances [5].

Eminent cotton scientists of the world have reported that “cotton farming and management practices, the utilization of new generation of chemical and biological fertilizers and their assessment tools, including modern conservation tillage, winter cover cropping, site-specific nutrient applications, and remote sensing technologies, as well as integrated pest and disease management programs” [2, 5] and cotton seed science development, will be the key research directions toward 2030.

3. Past 5-year development trends

Cotton-research-related publications over more than one century (1908–2022), retrieved from the PubMed database [6] using the keyword search of “Gossypium,” revealed over 9060 scientific publications as of March 2022 (Figure 1). We observed a publication increase in early 1966 that had doubled in number compared with earlier years. The next twofold increase was observed around 1973–1975, and publication activity remained in the same range of about 100 publications per year until 2000, after which a sharp 1.6-fold increase (167 publications) was observed in 2001. The next bumps were in 2007 (227 publications/year), 2013 (385 publications/year), and 2016 (420 publications/year), remaining at the plateau till today.

Figure 1.

PubMed [6] indexed scientific publications, retrieved using the “Gossypium” keyword in March 2022.

The literature analysis and research publication on the Gossypium science for the past 5 years clearly showed the advancement trends of cotton research worldwide for the current time. The number of publications per year for the past 5-year period was at the plateau and was within the range of 420 publications/year, and overall, we found over 2009 available articles in PubMed, retrieved using the “Gossypium” keyword, out of which 1948 were directly related to the cotton study. Interestingly, analysis based on PubMed indexed journals showed that, over the past 5 years, at least, 283 internationally known peer-reviewed plant science journals including but are not limited to Front Plant Sci (125 publications), PLoS One (103 publications), Sci Rep (103 publications), BMC Plant Biol (92 publications), Int J Mol Sci (81 publications), and BMC Genomics (72 publications) have published cotton articles. Among all PubMed-indexed publications, the majority of works (1872 publications) were research articles, while 55 articles were literature review works. The remaining 21 articles were Brief Communications (3 publications), Database (3 publications), Protocols (3 publications), Reports (3 publications), Research highlights (2 publications), Scientific opinions (2 publications) as well as Disease notes, Methods, News & Views, Brief Reports, and Short communications (1 publication of each).

These publications have also used or investigated a diverse type of cotton species including but are not limited to G. hirsutum (796 publications), Gossypium barbadense (219 publications), G. arboreum (226 publications), G. raimondii (191 publications), Gossypium herbaceum (17 publications), G. davidsonii (7 publications), G. longicalyx (5 publications), and Glossoloma anomalum (1 publication). The main AD-genome allotetraploid (G. hirsutum and G. barbadense) and A- and D-genome diploid (G. herbaceum, G. arboretum, and G. raimondii) cotton species were the subjects to study a diverse set of traits and/or plant ontogenesis or resistance-related processes, while some of the diploid species including G. davidsonii, G. longicalyx, and G. anomalum have been mainly used to study the specific traits such as cytoplasmic male sterility, pant development, salt stress tolerance, nematode resistance, and fiber development.

In this context, in-depth analysis and review of the past 5-year publications have revealed the main directions of cotton research that the world research community or leading researchers have focused on lately (Figure 2). In particular, researchers have more focused on studying biotic stresses [e.g., 7, 8, 9, 10], plant development [e.g., 11, 12, 13], abiotic stresses [e.g., 14, 15], fiber development [e.g., 16, 17], and genomics [e.g., 18, 19, 20, 21] compared with other directions. Studies on cotton agronomy [22, 23], genetics and breeding [24, 25], evolution [26, 27], yield improvement [28, 29], processing of cotton product [30, 31], biochemical components [32, 33], and mutagenesis [34, 35] were also carried out.

Figure 2.

Research directions of the past 5-year scientific publications.

The past 5-year published literature analysis demonstrated that cotton plant protection, in particular, resistance to biotic pressure (670 publications) and abiotic stresses (323 publications) have been the two major research trends of cotton research for the past 5-year period. Researchers have also focused on plant development (355 publications), fiber development (282 publications), and genome (203 publications) studies. Each main direction, in turn, has addressed the diverse research problems in cotton based on national or global level issues. Here, interestingly, we observed the leading number of biotic stress-related publications with more focus on insect resistance (171 publications) or pest control (166 publications), following the Verticillium wilt disease (152 publications) topics. Similarly, publications on abiotic stress-related topics have mainly addressed salinity tolerance, drought tolerance, cold tolerance, heat and drought tolerance, soil mineral deficiency, and its impact on many other traits and crop productivity. Salt (94 publications) and drought (72 publications) or their combinations (43 publications) were the main targets of researchers. These directions could also be the result of the need for cotton farming for the improvement of cotton cultivar development under harsh environmental conditions and/or increased disease/pest pressure over the past years. Moreover, these key research directions are most likely to be in our current and future cotton research program agenda under the rapidly growing challenges and limitations of the global climate change scenario worldwide.

This Cotton book volume has compiled scientific chapters from the international research community that covers the current status and latest advances in cotton science. Chapters have presented a wide range of novel discussions on cotton genetics, biochemistry and physiology of important trait(s), bioinformatics and genomics resources to understand the cotton plant, genomics and transcriptomic approaches to the identification and characterization of important genes, novel transgenic tools for acceleration of cotton breeding against climate issues and biotic/abiotic stress pressures, biological control and machinery tools for cotton cultivar protection, and cottonseed meal production as well as sustainable and effective farming in the era of climate change and technological advance. These peer-reviewed chapters have also presented novel views and discussions on the abovementioned research trends observed in the past 5-year publications, which will be an excellent addendum for readers.

4. Conclusion

Thus, this Cotton book chapters from international cotton research communities have timely provided an overview of the current state of advancement in cotton research. I am confident that these peer-reviewed chapter discussions should help to determine the current and future development trends in cotton science, cultivar development, and sustainable cotton agriculture in the world.

Acknowledgments

I thank Dr. Mirzakamol S. Ayubov and his lab members for their help with the published literature analysis.