Cotton Farming Heritage of Parbhani: Marathwada's White Gold

Parbhani district's black cotton soil (regur vertisol) is the natural habitat of cotton cultivation, and the district has been growing cotton for over 2,000 years, with Sanskrit texts mentioning cotton from the Pratishthana (Paithan) region. Traditional desi cotton varieties including Karunganni and H-4 were grown on rain-fed soil before the Bt cotton revolution. Today Bt cotton varieties dominate, producing 3-4x the yield of traditional varieties but requiring insecticides that older varieties did not. Traditional cotton farming involved deep ploughing, mixed cropping with tur (pigeon pea) in 1:4 rows, and selective hand-picking of cotton bolls in two to three pickings per season. The cotton gin houses of Parbhani's market yard area are evidence of the historical cotton trade. Women perform all three picking operations, constituting the primary cotton harvest labour force.