Currently, the qualities that are being engineered into cotton relate to crop management issues such as insect-resistance (Frutos et al. , 1999), herbicide-tolerance (Schmidt, 1995) and stress- resistance (John and Stewart, 1992). However, in the future the aims are to modify the fibre to introduce new properties or to enhance existing properties such as length, strength and/or fineness in order to produce a more desirable end product. Before this can be accomplished, a fundamental understanding of how the fibre quality traits are biologically regulated must be obtained (John and Stewart, 1992).

The developing cotton fibre is an attractive experimental system because the fibre cells originate and end as a single cell and thus elongation can be studied free from the complications that arise from cell division (Basra and Malik, 1984). Therefore, in addition to its economic importance as a natural textile fibre, the developing cotton fibre is an excellent model system for unravelling the fundamental processes of plant cell growth.