Data from: Assessing agronomic and physiological traits during reproductive developmental stages for breeding Upland drought tolerant cotton

Developing new cultivars with drought resilience is difficult for cotton breeders/geneticists, because there is a lack of knowledge of which traits to target for improvement. Morphological and agronomic data was collected from two cultivars representing different production regions [far west – ‘PhytoGen 72’ (PHY72) and midsouth – ‘Stoneville 474’ (STV474)] of the US. These data were used to evaluate which traits are associated with drought resilience under semi environmental control (greenhouse). The dataset includes twenty eight traits that were evaluated for two irrigation regimes during the six critical reproductive stages of 50 % squaring, 100 % squaring, 50 % flowering, peak bloom and early boll setting, advanced flowering and boll setting, and initial boll cracking. The published article, based on these data, showed that traits such as leaf temperature (peak bloom and early boll setting), chlorophyll fluorescence yield (50 % squaring), number of leaves (peak bloom and early boll setting), flowers (50 % flowering) bolls (peak bloom and early boll setting and initial boll cracking), and plant height (50 % squaring and peak bloom and early boll setting) as single targets or in combination, could be used in selection strategies for breeding and genetically improving cotton for drought resiliency.