Upland cotton, Gossypium hirsutum, is a tetraploid (AADD) that originated in Mesoamerica and has become the predominant species of commercial fiber production throughout the world.� The diploid (AA) species, G. arboreum and G. herbaceum, were independently domesticated in Asia and Africa, and represent a large germplasm pool that can potentially be used to improve upland cotton.� However, introgression is hindered by post-zygotic breeding barriers as well as the difference in chromosome number.� Crosses between upland cotton and the A-genome diploids typically result in fruit abscission within a week of pollination due to endosperm abortion and embryo degeneration.� In-vitro ovule rescue can be used to obtain triploid interspecific progeny but there is little information about the relative crossability of different parental genotypes.� In this study, ten upland cotton genotypes were crossed as females in a factorial design with one G. herbaceum and four G. arboreum genotypes as males.� The female parents included two pairs of lines near-isogenic for glanded/glandless.� Fruit were harvested four days after pollination.� The ovules of each fruit were removed aseptically and placed on a Petri dish containing 25 ml of modified Murashige and Skoog media.� Ovules were incubated at 30 �C with 12 hr of fluorescent light per day.� For each parental combination, ovule cultures were established successfully for two to ten fruit.� The number of germinated embryos per fruit was recorded.� Variation for average crossability was greater among the upland cotton genotypes (0.4 � 3.1 seedlings/fruit) than among the A-genome diploids (1.1 � 2.0 seedlings/fruit).� The glandless trait was not advantageous.� Two of the three most crossable upland cotton parents were previously reported to be good genotypes for obtaining somatic embryos.� Thus for cotton, somatic embryogensis and interspecific ovule rescue have features in common, and methods developed for one may be applicable to the other.