Standard Cotton Grading Chart and Classification
Shareful Islam Palash
Lecturer, Institute of Textile Engineering & Information Technology
Email: palash313@gmail.com
What is Cotton Grading?
Cotton grading is the process of evaluating the quality parameters of raw cotton such as fiber length, strength, color, trash content, and uniformity. Cotton classification by grade is defined as the art and science of describing the quality of cotton in terms of grade according to the official standards. Because, the quality of cotton fibers differs from place to place and plant to plant. Cotton is classed to determine essentially it’s grade, which indicates the spinning value and utility and hence the market value or the price of cotton.
The term ‘cotton grading’ refers to the application of official standards and standardized procedures developed by US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to measure the physical attributes of raw cotton that affect the quality of the finished product and manufacturing efficiency. The USDA classification currently consists of determinations of fiber length, length uniformity, fiber strength, micronaire, color, and the existence of trash, leaves and extraneous matter. Now, cotton trash and color are important factors to determine market value in the current cotton grading system.
Standard Chart of Cotton Grading and Classification:
There are different types of cotton . Here I only discuss about the U.S. cotton grade by standards officials grading system.
Standard Chart of Cotton Grading | |||||
| White | Light Spotted | Spotted | Tinged | Yellow Stained | |
| Good Middling 1 | 11 – 1 | 12 | 13 | – | |
| Strict Middling | 21- 2 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 35 |
| Middling | 31- 3 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| Strict Low Middling | 41- 4 | 42 | 43 | 44 | – |
| Low Middling | 51- 5 | 52 | 53 | 54 | – |
| Strict Good Ordinary | 61- 6 | 62 | 63 | – | – |
| Good Ordinary | 71- 7 | – | – | ||
| Below Grade | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 |
How Can Understand Cotton Grade?
By this chart we can easily understand/identified the cotton grade. For example,
Question: What do we mean by Cotton grade 32-2?
Answer:
Here ,
3 means Cotton grade (Middling).
2 means Color grade (Light spotted) and
2 means Leaf grade (strict Middling).
By this process we can identified all types of cotton grade for US cotton.
Conclusion:
Cotton grading is important for trade and manufacturing because it helps determine the quality value of cotton fibers. By the cotton grade merchants could efficiently buy and sell cotton in accordance with its grade. So grading is very important for textiles mills specially spinning mills. Here I only try to gives general knowledge about grading. If I mistake anything please try to help me correction.
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Founder & Editor of Textile Learner. He is a Textile Consultant, Blogger & Entrepreneur. Mr. Kiron is working as a textile consultant in several local and international companies. He is also a contributor of Wikipedia.
