**1. Introduction**

Cotton (*Gossypium hirsutum* L.) is the major fiber and cash crop, not only in India but for the entirety. Cotton is the only crop which travels with the human being in each and every part of his/her life. It is cultivated in tropical as well as sub-tropical regions of more than seventy countries of the World. Cotton is a crop of global significance playing a significant role in the agricultural and industrial economy. Around 60% of fiber to Indian textiles is from cotton. The recent statistics released from USDA - Foreign Agricultural Service (September 2020) indicates that India (13.40 million ha) has more than one third of the World's area (32.94 million ha) under cotton with a productivity of 487 kg/ha, which is far below than the World's productivity of 775 kg/ha. Many of the Countries like Brazil, China, Turkey, Australia have the productivity of more than

1500 kg/ha. China with 3.25 million ha of cultivation (less than one fourth of the area of India) could result in a production of 27.25 million 480 lb. bales (as projected by USDA) compared to the Indian production projected at 30.00 million 480 lb. bales from 13.40 million ha. This clearly signifies the productivity gap prevailing at India for cotton.

If Indian production is juxtaposed against China during 2019/20 marketing year, China accounted for just over 22 percent of total world cotton production, of which 86 percent of that was produced in Xinjiang province (just under 20 percent of the world total). China exports only a small amount of cotton lint, half-of-one-percent of production. Other than some minor exports to North Korea, China is the world's largest importer of cotton. This provides China with a supply of cotton normally greater than one-third of world use and nearly 40 percent larger than India [1]. This scenario also clearly explains the gap which is existing in India compared to other Countries which could make the country to progress further in the yield front of cotton provided newer technologies and cropping systems are adopted *in toto*.
