Global cotton production faces mounting pressure to reconcile rising fiber demand with urgent sustainability imperatives, including water scarcity mitigation, greenhouse gas reduction, and agrochemical pollution control. Traditional practices, constrained by fragmented objectives and inherent trade-offs among yield, fiber quality, labor efficiency, and ecological impact, struggle to address these systemic challenges. Building upon previous concept of collaborative cultivation, this review for the first time introduces and comprehensively elaborates multi-objective integrated cotton cultivation (MOICC) - also referred to as integrated cotton cultivation (ICC) - a transformative framework centered on three pillars: dynamic trade-off management (e.g., region-specific priority adjustment), systematic technology integration (precision seeding, dense planting, chemical regulation, water-nutrient synergy, and targeted defoliation), and resource circularity (spatiotemporal optimization and waste recycling). MOICC overcomes sustainability bottlenecks by leveraging key physiological mechanisms, including ethylene signaling to enhance stress-resilient seedling establishment, jasmonate-mediated pathways to improve water/nutrient efficiency, canopy light competition coupled with hormonal regulation to eliminate manual pruning, and growth regulators to concentrate boll maturation. Case studies from diverse Chinese agro-ecosystems (e.g., Xinjiang, Yangtze/Yellow River basins) and intercropping systems demonstrate significant synergies: increased yield (8–22%), improved resource efficiency (water use efficiency increased by ≥20%, and nitrogen productivity up to 35 kg kg–1), and enhanced environmental performance (labor reduction of 30–40%, carbon footprint reduction of 24–37%, and agrochemical savings: nitrogen reduction of 15–20% and pesticides reduction of 25%). Crucially, MOICC resolves core conflicts through integrated optimization: yield vs. quality (via ≥70% inner-position bolls), labor-saving vs. eco-safety (precision defoliant timing), and productivity vs. emissions (root-zone nitrogen monitoring). Future research priorities include deciphering multi-scale stress adaptation, developing intelligent decision-support systems (e.g., AHP-NSGA-II integration), advancing carbon-neutral value chains, addressing socio-economic adoption barriers, and fostering policy synergy. Overall, MOICC establishes a conceptually globally scalable pathway toward high-yield, superior-quality, resource-efficient, and ecologically sustainable cotton production, with potential applicability to other major cropping systems.
