Cotton in as commonly known in English, is called as Kapas in Hindi & Gujarati, Narma in Punjabi, Hatti in Kannada, Parthi inTamil, Patti in Telugu and Kapus in Marathi.

Cotton is the most important fiber crop not only of India but of the entire world. It provides the basic raw material (cotton fiber) to cotton textile industry. It is a crop of tropical and sub-tropical areas and requires uniformly high temperature varying between 25°C and 35°C. The growth of cotton is retarded when the temperature falls below 20°C.

The crop grows well in areas receiving average annual rainfall of 50-100 cm. However, it is successfully grown in areas of lesser rainfall if irrigation is available. In India, about one-third of the total area under cotton cultivation is irrigated.

About 80 per cent of the irrigated area in cotton is located in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Moist weather and heavy rainfall at the time of boll opening and picking are detrimental to cotton as the plant becomes vulnerable to pests and diseases & picking quality is degraded. High amount of rainfall in the beginning of crop season and sunny and dry weather at crop maturity is very useful for a good crop.

Cotton is a kharif crop which requires 5 to 7 months to mature. Its time of sowing and harvesting differs in different parts of the country depending upon the climatic conditions.

India has the largest area under cotton cultivation in the world and is the world's second largest producer of cotton after China. Cotton is grown on approximately 12 million ha area in the country.

In India, Crystal is selling its cotton hybrids under the brand name Surpass^® which is specially designed for innovative and entrepreneurial Indian cotton farmers striving to be leaders in cotton farming.

Surpass^® brand hybrids are characteristics of three fold deliverables-
- FARMER - Good quality and high yield
- GINNER - Higher lint recovery percentage
- MILLER - Textile Mill: Excellent fiber quality characteristics for yarn manufacturing