Genetically modified cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) has been one of the plant biotechnology's greatest success stories. Yet, the current cotton transformation process, which relies on a combination of antibiotic resistance and destructive reporter gene assay, is inefficient in producing transgenic cotton plants. Recent reports have shown that the green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene is an efficient visual marker system for plant genetic transformation. Here we report the use of GFP as a visual selection marker for the bombardment transformation of embryogenic callus from the cotton cultivar Coker 312. The use of GFP visual selection improved our transformation efficiency to as high as 3.3/plate and reduced the time required for transgenic somatic embryo formation to as little as 5 weeks. These results showed that GFP visual selection is more efficient in selecting transformed cells than the traditional chemical based antibiotic selection method.