Report on the laboratories conditions and equipment of the WG8 mediterranean cotton network

The Mediterranean Cotton Network (MCN) is organised around Working Groups (WG) working in the main disciplines of cotton research. One of this groups (WG8) is mainly studying cotton fibre technology. However, most of the WG use at least fibre technology results to check the efficiency of their treatments or breeding programs. Then, participants from different Mediterranean countries share and compare their results within MCN meetings and it appears that various devices are used to measure fibre characteristic. Since some interaction may exist between results coming from different measuring devices, it appeared necessary to get a list of the apparatus used in the different countries by all the members interested in cotton fibre quality characterisation. For this purpose, a questionnaire has been sent to these members about their laboratory conditions, their devices (name and calibration), the parameters they measure and the cotton calibration standards used