Zhen Li

Hainan Institute of Biotechnology, Haikou, 570206, Hainan, China
Author    Correspondence author
Field Crop, 2025, Vol. 8, No. 4   
Received: 01 Jun., 2025    Accepted: 12 Jul., 2025    Published: 01 Aug., 2025

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cotton, as a globally significant economic crop, its yield and fiber quality are directly related to the textile industry and farmers' income. Planting density and row spacing configuration are key cultivation factors that affect the population structure, light energy utilization efficiency and yield and quality formation of cotton. This study reviews the regulatory effects of planting density on the photosynthetic efficiency, boll formation characteristics and fiber traits of cotton, explores the mechanism of row spacing configuration in improving population structure, root distribution and fiber consistency, and focuses on analyzing the interaction effect between density and row spacing. On this basis, combined with practical cases from typical regions (the Yellow River Basin in China, the southern United States and the cotton-growing areas in Central Asia), The application experience of optimizing density and row spacing under different ecological conditions was summarized. This study also focused on molecular and physiological mechanisms such as photosynthetic gene expression, hormone regulation, and root-crown coordination, providing theoretical support for a deeper understanding of the relationship between cultivation measures and fiber quality formation. This study aims to provide a reference path for the development of precise cultivation models and smart agriculture, promoting the coordinated improvement of cotton yield and fiber quality.

Cotton; Planting density; Line spacing configuration; Output; Fiber quality