USDA approves edible cotton…

Yesterday, the U.S. Department Of Agriculture gave a preliminary go-ahead to an edible cotton product, paving the way for farmers to grow cotton as not just a textile but a food. Before you, like me, get too fixated on the fascinating image of popping cotton poofs into your mouth like, well, cotton candy, that’s not exactly what edible cotton will look like. It’s the cotton seeds that would be edible; currently, cottonseed is mostly used as feed for cattle or is pressed to make cottonseed oil. 

Dr. Keerti Rathore, a plant biotechnologist at Texas A&M University, has been working to develop this new type of cotton for years. According to an article from AgriLife, the cotton is transgenic, meaning DNA from an unrelated organism has been introduced in order to produce new traits in the plant. The cotton plant Rathore developed—sexily dubbed TAM66274—has ultralow levels of gossypol, which repels pests from cotton but is toxic to humans. Through his research, Rathore developed cotton that maintains normal levels of gossypol in the stem or leaves of the plant but has virtually no gossypol in the seeds. 

So what does it taste like? Rathore tells Forbes “it’ll taste like hummus. It’s not at all unpleasant.”

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