Cotton Cultivation Guide: Sowing, Spacing & Pink Bollworm Control

Updated 2026-07-10 · Crop guides

Cotton is a major cash crop but an unforgiving one — long duration, thirsty for management, and a magnet for pests. Get the sowing, spacing and pink bollworm strategy right and it rewards you; get them wrong and one pest wipes out the profit. Here is what matters.

Sowing time and spacing

• Sow with the onset of the monsoon (irrigated cotton can start a little earlier). Late sowing exposes the crop to peak pink bollworm.
• Use recommended, certified seed for your zone. Follow the spacing on the pack — High-Density Planting (HDPS) with closer spacing suits short-duration varieties and rainfed land and can lift yield.
• Maintain a refuge (non-Bt border) with Bt cotton to slow resistance — it is on the seed pack for a reason.

Nutrients and water

Cotton is a heavy feeder — apply nitrogen in splits through the season, and don’t skimp on potassium, which drives boll development and disease resistance. Water is most critical at flowering and boll formation; stress then costs bolls directly. Avoid waterlogging, which cotton hates.

Pink bollworm — the crop-killer

Pink bollworm larvae bore into bolls and destroy the lint and seed from inside, invisibly. Manage it with an integrated approach:

• Pheromone traps to monitor and mass-trap adults; act on early catches.
• Destroy crop residue and don’t extend the crop late — this breaks the pest’s carry-over to next season (the single biggest lever).
• Rotate insecticides by mode of action; spray only on threshold, not by the calendar.
• Remove and destroy rosette (damaged) flowers that harbour larvae.

Picking

Pick when bolls are fully open and dry, keep the lint clean (no leaf trash or damp cotton), and store dry — clean picking directly raises the price you get at the mandi.