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Highlights

Relationships between cottonseed shear strength and cottonseed moisture content, seed surface condition (delinted and fuzzy), and cotton cultivar were studied.

Abstract. Cotton gins struggle to process excessively moist cotton, so they must reduce the processing rate and increase dryer temperatures to gin seed cotton with high moisture content, resulting in monetary losses. The decrease in ginning efficiency has been linked to the moisture content of the cottonseed, but there has been limited research to elucidate this relationship. While both seed cotton moisture and fiber moisture affect ginning efficiency, if the moisture has not penetrated into the cottonseed, increased drying temperatures can effectively remove the moisture from the fiber and maintain normal processing rates. On the other hand, cottonseed becomes soft at high moisture content, resulting in increased seed coat fragments in the cotton lint and crushed seed getting stuck in the gin ribs, decreasing ginning rates. Research was thus conducted to determine the relationship between the moisture content of cottonseed and cottonseed structural integrity as indicated by shear strength. Cottonseed samples of four different cotton cultivars and two seed surface conditions (fuzzy and delinted) were stored in hermetically sealed containers at four different relative humidities for two weeks to reach equilibrium. Fifty-two individual cottonseeds from each sample were sheared with a double-shear device, and the maximum shear stress was calculated. An analysis of variance was conducted to determine whether the treatments or their interactions were significantly correlated with shear strength as determined by maximum shear stress. Results indicated a strong inverse exponential relationship between cottonseed moisture content and shear strength. The relationship between seed surface condition and shear strength was minimal, and there were no significant differences among the cultivars.