April 4 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures extended their decline on Tuesday and dropped to the lowest in nearly 10-weeks as index funds and speculators rolled their positions ahead of the first notice day for the May contract due in three weeks.

The May cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S. settled 0.82 percent lower at 74.85 cents per lb, after touching the lowest since Jan. 26 at 74.55 cents earlier. The contract marked its biggest one-day percentage decline in nearly seven-months on Monday.

"There's not a lot of buying interest on May because we only have a limited time for this contract to be active before first notice day," said Louis Rose, co-founder and director of research and analytics at Rose Commodity Group. "We're going to see some weakness ahead of the first notice day on April 24," Rose added.

* The May cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S settled down 0.62 cent, or 0.82 percent, at 74.85 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 74.55 and 75.72 cents a lb.
* Total futures market volume fell by 8,245 to 50,285 lots.
* Data showed total open interest gained 354 to 280,256 contracts in the previous session.

(Reporting by Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Hay)