Edible cotton seeds could revolutionize the cotton industry. That’s the goal of one researcher who says the seeds would be an inexpensive protein source that could help feed millions of people.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Now, lots of people eat pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds, but cotton seeds? Probably not so much, right? But one researcher has worked for decades to make them edible. Harvest Public Media’s Michael Marks reports.
MICHAEL MARKS, BYLINE: If you look at a cotton seed, you’ll see that it’s covered in little black dots, and for 30 years, Keerti Rathore has been trying to make those dots disappear. Rathore is a professor of soil and crop sciences at Texas A&M University specializing in genetic modification. The black flecks are traces of gossypol, a toxin that makes cotton seeds inedible for most animals.
KEERTI RATHORE: And the plant actually needs this toxin because this toxin provides some resistance to insects and some diseases.
MARKS: But reducing gossypol in seeds could revolutionize the cotton business. Rathore uses a technique called gene silencing, which essentially mutes a gene that helps produce the toxin in the seed. By his calculations, using it could create a new inexpensive protein source for chicken, fish and even people.
RATHORE: And if you could utilize that protein directly for human nutrition, you could meet the basic protein requirements of 500 million people. That’s a lot of protein.
MARKS: In his office, Rathore lays out normal cotton seeds as well as some he’s modified.
RATHORE: The gossypol levels have gone down.
MARKS: You can tell. They’re…
RATHORE: Yeah.
MARKS: …Just so much whiter.
RATHORE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARKS: They don’t have those little black flecks.
The raw seeds have a mild taste, a bit like chickpeas. Rathore’s research has been financed by Cotton Incorporated. Tom Wedegaertner is now retired, but he worked with Rathore as the industry group’s research and marketing director.
TOM WEDEGAERTNER: Everybody’s like, it’s a no-brainer. Why in the world wouldn’t we be growing cotton with a more valuable and edible seed?
MARKS: The gossypol level in most cotton seed is about 10,000 parts per million. Rathore’s goal was to get it down to 450, which the Food and Drug Administration says is a safe level for human consumption. He got there, but some cotton scientists say it would be hard to maintain that level in commercial cotton. Mike Dowd is a former USDA research scientist who specialized in measuring gossypol. Around 2018, he measured the levels in seeds Keerti Rathore was testing.
MIKE DOWD: And so the samples come to me. I think there were 20 or 25 samples from individual plants. And every one of them came out 10 times higher than what Keerti says they are.
MARKS: Different kinds of cotton naturally have different levels of gossypol. The weather can also affect how much of the toxin is in the plant. But food products, even for livestock feed, have to be consistent, Dowd says.
DOWD: Man, Lord help you if you say this stuff is 100 to 150 and you give it to a food company and they come out and decide that it’s a thousand. That kills it. It’s done.
MARKS: Rathore and Cotton Incorporated have tried to give it to a food company – lots of them. For years, they met with major seed distributors. But according to financial backer Wedegaertner, the companies can’t see how they would profit, and large portions of the globe don’t accept genetically modified foods at all. Now, Rathore is trying a new strategy – giving the seeds to developing countries with no strings attached.
RATHORE: My hope is that once they see the benefit, once they see that, yes, farmers are growing it and they’re benefiting from it, I think we should do the same thing here in the U.S.
MARKS: The first country is lined up. Officials in Uzbekistan are ready to start growing Rathore’s seeds as soon as possible. For NPR News, I’m Michael Marks in Austin, Texas.
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