Specific levels of the carbohydrates melezitose and trehalulose deposited on the surface of cotton fibers are indicators of whitefly or aphid contamination. These deposits could cause stickiness problems during cotton ginning and textile processing. Cotton stickiness is highly complex, but surface carbohydrates may play the largest role in manifesting an issue. We utilized ion chromatography (IC) to identify and quantify nine sugars of interest present in the water extracts of 25 cotton samples to create sugar profiles for each sample: inositol, trehalose, glucose, fructose, trehalulose, sucrose, melezitose, raffinose and maltose. We compared the sugar profiles to the respective Minicard ratings of either NONE, LIGHT, MODERATE or HEAVY to draw correlations between the IC data and the rating. Trehalulose and melezitose in water extracts highly and positively correlate to Minicard ratings, confirming past researchers’ attribution of cotton stickiness to insect sugars. Trehalose and maltose also highly correlated, possibly due to their marker content in honeydew. Glucose and fructose moderately correlated to the ratings. IC studies of the collected Minicard sticky spot material found trehalulose and melezitose were the most prevalent sugars in HEAVY rated samples. Glucose and fructose were present in larger amounts in the MODERATE versus HEAVY rated samples. This result may indicate that the Benedict Test, which attributes these reducing sugars to stickiness, may not be sufficient for conjecturing a stickiness issue. When comparing the averages of the nine sugars present in water extracts versus those sugars contained in Minicard sticky spots, the overall distributions were very similar.
