With the popularization of commercial high-density SNP chips and the decline in the price of second-generation sequencing, GS is increasingly applied to crop breeding practice, such as rice (
Oryza sativa)[
19] and maize (
Zea mays)[
20]. In addition, GS is also used in cotton breeding.Based on 215 upland cotton varieties, Gapare[
21] studied the cotton fiber length and strength by using five forecasting models, and found that the multi-environment forecasting model was better than the single environment forecasting model, emphasizing the importance of considering environmental factors in GS. Islam[
22] used 550 multi-parent advanced generation inter-cross (MAGIC population) to analyze the GS of six cotton fiber quality traits. The study showed that increasing marker density and expanding the size of training population could improve the prediction accuracy of GS in a certain range. Li[
23] used 8 statistical methods to conduct GS analysis for the first time based on the data from 1385 cotton commercial varieties with the largest scale in many years. The research showed that the interaction between genes and environment had a significant impact on the prediction results when considering the complex traits controlled by multiple genes, and it was very important to add pedigree and environmental factors to optimize the prediction performance. Genomic selection is widely used in crops in China. In 2013, Guo[
24] used GS to study maize for the first time in China, and predicted the phenotype of F1 hybrid combinations produced by these recombinant inbred lines through the data of recombinant inbred lines Zong 3 and 87-1, and obtained 114 hybrid combinations that may be superior to the excellent single-cross variety Yuyu 22. Li[
25] evaluated 8 GS methods (parameter methods: RR, EN, LASSO, BayesB, BayesC, RKHS; Non-parametric methods: RF and SVM), it is found that parametric methods are better than nonparametric methods in most cases. Xiao[266] predicted four characters of japonica rice by RRBLUP, and found that the real yield-related characters of two materials (YG7313 and NG9108) were highly consistent with the predicted values. Using these two materials as high-yield core parents, two backbone lines XY99 and JXY1 have been successfully bred, which shows that GS is very practical. Qin[
27] identified the candidate genes of soybean seed protein, and then combined GWAS with GS to predict the content of soybean seed protein by RRBLUP and LASSO model. TianGan’s team used multi-group data, combined multi-source remote sensing data with machine learning algorithm, and used decision tree (DT), random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), ridge regression (RR) and other models to improve the accuracy of yield prediction, which provided a reference for yield prediction in winter wheat breeding. Liu[
28] confirmed that the utility and efficiency of GS can be improved by using genes significantly related to target traits in cotton breeding. High yield and high quality are the main goals of cotton breeding. At present, there are few studies on cotton GS in China, which are largely in the development stage.