Contaminated material going into a high speed manufacturing process is a very serious problem.
Sticky cotton results from excess plant sugar and late season aphid infestations which deposit honeydew on some fiber. Stickiness can cause cotton to tag and build up on rollers in textile processing machinery, slowing down production and creating low quality end-products. Textile mills dread stickiness so much that they avoid any cotton they are even suspicious may cause problems, resulting in reduced sale, substantially lower market prices, and, worst of all, a damaged reputation. The ITC helped implement a damage control effort with textile mills by assessing the causes of the problem, by making stickiness a major research focus, and by assisting with a farmer education effort to avoid future problems. These projects will examine threshold levels of sugar contamination, develop recommendations for producers, and explore the processing problems that textile mills encounter.