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Cotton is at once a fiber, food, and feed crop. The cotton plant is a warm-season woody perennial shrub that is grown as an annual field crop. Worldwide, over 30 million ha of cotton are grown between 47° Nand 32° SLat with over 50% of the production above 30° N Lat. From these crop plants comes cotton lint, an industrial raw material. Thus a renewable agricultural resource enters into competition with synthetic fibers in the textile industry. These crop plants produce not only lint but also the world's second most important oilseed. This compendium of the literature on cotton will provide a knowledge base for scientists who work in agronomic, crop, and soils research. It is a scholarly treatise from which new insights in plant research will occur, and a knowledge platform from which new cotton research and technologies will grow.