John Deere CP770 Cotton Picker, Green 1:64 Diecast Model Vehicle by Ertl

A cotton picker is either a machine that harvests cotton, or a person who picks ripe cotton fibre from the plants. The machine is also referred to as a cotton harvester.

To make mechanical cotton pickers more practical, improvements in the cotton plant and in cotton culture were also necessary. In earlier times, cotton fields had to be picked by hand three and four times each harvest season because the bolls matured at different rates. It was not practical to delay picking until all the bolls were ready for picking because the quality of the cotton deteriorated as soon as bolls opened. But about the time mechanical pickers were introduced, plant breeders developed hybrid cotton varieties with bolls higher off the ground and that ripened uniformly. With those innovations, the harvester could make just one pass through the field. Also, herbicides were developed to defoliate the plants and drop their leaves before the picker came through, producing a cleaner harvest