US researchers develop stronger cotton fibre
19/02/2014
"This technology allows improvement of fibre quality in upland cotton," said Alan Pepper, an associate professor in the Texas A&M Department of Biology and senior author of the paper. "This will increase the competitiveness of natural cotton fibres versus synthetic fibres, which have been snagging an increasing amount of the market share every year.
"For a long time cotton breeders have been trying to develop upland cotton with the fiber qualities of barbadense cotton. Economically, it's a huge deal, because every millimetre you add to fibre length adds that much to the price of cotton when the farmer sells it."
Published in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers' method increased the length of the fibre by 5mm, or 17%, compared with the control plants in their experiment.
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