The bioeconomy is a complex, multivariate, and interdisciplinary system that requires a comprehensive assessment of its independent parts if it is to be understood fully. Hence, this article presents a holistic perspective of industry, public policy, and education aspects of the US bioeconomy. It is premised on the idea that a successful bioeconomy industry relies on the balanced development of all stages of the supply chain. For this balance to be struck, a strong interdisciplinary workforce must find novel solutions to multifaceted problems across the entirety of the supply chain. These solutions require innovative technologies that can improve the climate benefit of bioproducts, decrease their production costs, and make them more economically competitive. Increasing consumer education and awareness about the bioeconomy goes hand in hand with the development of a robust market for bioproducts. To guide these interdependent efforts, public policies must encourage demand, support competitive markets, promote the entry of renewable options, and stimulate growth by reducing financial barriers. We contend that a combination of policies is likely to be more effective than any singular policy on its own. Supporting the bioeconomy also entails attending to an existing lack of public awareness as well as workforce‐ready professionals. To address these gaps, the USA must increase the intensity and intentionality of its efforts to educate students about the bioeconomy, particularly at the K‐12 level. Furthermore, these efforts should encompass both formal and informal learning contexts in order to meet the workforce challenges facing the bioeconomy now and in the future. © 2021 The Authors. Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining published by Society of Industrial Chemistry and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Knowledge of cotton fiber length uniformity is important for the cotton industry. The accurate and reliable measurement of fiber length uniformity would allow cotton breeders to release new cotton varieties with improved fiber length variation. This knowledge would also help spinning mills to optimize their machine setup, which would improve yarn processing performance. Currently, the high volume instrument (HVI) is most commonly used to characterize the cotton fiber length variation. The HVI length measurement is based on the fibrogram principle. The HVI length measurement characterizes 2 points, 1.8% as the upper half mean length (UHML) and 7.8% span length as the mean length (ML) from the fibrogram, and reports UHML and uniformity index (UI). The ratio of ML to the UHML is used to calculate the UI and is expressed as a percentage. UI measurement does not represent the shorter fibers as the above two span lengths only represent the longest fibers within a sample. We propose to calculate the uniformity of the cotton fiber length using the complete fibrogram as an alternative. First, the area of the measured fibrogram curve is calculated. Second, the area of a theoretical mono-length fibrogram with a length equal to the maximum length of the fibers for the same sample is calculated. Finally, we calculate a new length uniformity as the ratio of the measured fibrogram area to the mono-length fibrogram area expressed as a percentage. Based on the results obtained using a set of 991 commercial samples, the new length uniformity shows promise. We also applied this new length uniformity to a set of 60 commercial-like samples and developed partial least square regression (PLSR) prediction models to predict yarn quality. The results obtained demonstrate that the new length uniformity predicts yarn quality better than the current UI.

Cotton spinning mills need high-quality fibers to maintain their manufacturing efficiency. Machinery throughput is increasing and it could translate into more processes with higher breaking stress. Consequently, more fibers are susceptible to breaking or damage. To face this problem, breeders must develop new varieties whose fibers can better withstand this mechanical stress. The main tool utilized in cotton breeding programs is the High Volume Instrument (HVI), which reports in a short time measurements such as micronaire, length, color, and strength. This instrument can also determine fiber elongation, but there is no current correction method for it. Both elongation and strength factor into the work-to-break of fibers, which plays a direct role in fiber breakage and spinning performance. The objective of this work was to develop cotton elongation standards, devise a correction procedure for HVI lines, evaluate measurement stability, and validate these results with a set of independent samples. Two commercial bales, one with low and one with high HVI elongation, were identified as potential elongation standards. The potential standards were produced and evaluated. After validation, they were used to correct HVI lines against Stelometer (STrength-ELOngation-METER) measurements. An independent set of samples was tested on corrected HVIs to confirm the effectiveness of the elongation corrected measurements. The HVI data were at least as good as the Stelometer data, with increased data acquisition speed and precision. This research can help cotton breeders to improve fiber elongation and strength at the same time, resulting in better fibers for yarn spinning.

Fiber length is a crucial property throughout many textile processing steps. The high volume instrument (HVI) is the most commonly used tool to assess the properties of cotton fibers. The HVI currently reports two length parameters, the upper-half mean length (UHML) and uniformity index (UI). The UI is the ratio of mean length (ML) to the UHML expressed as a percentage. UHML and ML are extracted from the fibrogram. These parameters are used in the current U.S. cotton classification and global cotton marketing systems. The two values are highly correlated and characterize only the longer fibers in a sample. The fibrogram holds more descriptive information than the two measurements provided by the HVI. However, limited information is available about the stability and repeatability of the fibrogram measurement. This study aims to investigate the stability of the fibrogram, assess the reproducibility across multiple instruments, and determine if corrective actions are required. Three different raw cotton sample sets were tested for this three-stage experiment. The obtained results demonstrate that for a given HVI, the entire fibrogram is stable over both the short term and long term; however, differences among HVIs were observed. The proposed correction procedure effectively reduces the differences among the four HVI lines.

Fiber length is an important parameter to spin cotton fibers. Cotton breeders work to improve length, and research samples may be machine-harvested, resulting in variability for trash content between samples within the same experiment. There is evidence that trash may directly or indirectly affect the measurement of some fiber quality parameters like micronaire and strength. We hypothesize that the presence of trash particles in the samples may compromise the quality of the length measurement and screening decisions in breeding programs. In order to test this hypothesis, we developed an experiment to evaluate the heritability of length parameters for entries with the same genetic background and affected by the same environment with different trash content. The heritability estimates for samples with high trash content are different from the estimates for samples with native low trash content. Cleaning trashy samples with a laboratory-scale lint cleaner brings the heritability estimates closer to the calculated values for samples with native low trash content. Although the values are similar, the types of variation are not the same. These results indicate that breeders must avoid making decisions based on samples with high trash content. Breeders should base their decisions on samples with low original trash content because this type of sample provides research results closer to the native length distribution.