South Indian textile mills have reduced their cotton procurement by around 40 per cent from Gujarat during the October-September season of 2016-17. Reason: growing adulteration in cotton. Faced with a growing demand, ginners in Gujarat reportedly started mixing comber waste in cotton. This propelled many mill owners to tap other parts of the country for cotton procurement to meet the compliance norms set by buyers.

High contamination affects the quality of yarns as well as the final product, that is, the garment. It is difficult for mills to identify the contamination as comber waste looks cleaner than cotton. Generally the quality of cotton is determined by its color, fiber length, strength, fitness and the degree to which the cotton is free from contamination. One of the important factors which make quality of raw cotton low is contamination. A contamination may be an impurity, which can affect the subsequent processes, product appearance or product quality in general. Contamination causes to produce low quality lint cotton, yarn and manufactured goods.

Contamination of raw cotton may take place at any level, at farm while picking, at storage and marketing or at ginning. Cotton at the farm level is mainly contaminated before or at the time of picking in a number of ways. At the time of ball opening brackish and decayed seed cotton appears. Mixed picking of these balls also causes contamination.