A new type of colored fiber cotton has been successfully created. Will there be colorful cotton in the future?

Science Fiction Network, January 6 (Xu Mingyang) According to Science and Technology Daily, the cotton molecular genetic improvement innovation team of the Cotton Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has successfully enriched betalain in cotton fibers and created pink cotton fibers, providing a new idea for using genetic engineering methods to cultivate multiple types of colored fiber cotton. The relevant research results were published online in Plant Biotechnology.

Cotton is one of the most important crops in the world. It originates from the subtropical regions. In my country, there are three major cotton regions: Xinjiang cotton region, Yellow River Basin cotton region and Yangtze River Basin cotton region. The height of cotton is generally about 1 meter, but it may grow up to 6 meters in tropical regions. After the flowers fall, cotton bolls are left, which are the fruits of cotton. When the cotton bolls mature, they will split open, revealing the fibers inside.

According to the different cotton fibers, it can be divided into three types: long-staple cotton (Sea Island cotton), fine-staple cotton (Upland cotton) and coarse-staple cotton (Asian cotton). my country has a long history of growing Asian cotton, but because of its short and coarse fibers, it is not suitable for machine spinning and is facing the problem of being eliminated. my country now grows more fine-staple cotton, which has high yield and good quality.

According to the different colors of cotton, it can be divided into white cotton, gray cotton, yellow cotton and colored cotton. Among them, cotton mills mostly use white cotton, and gray cotton and yellow cotton are rarely used.

Researchers said that colored fiber cotton can effectively reduce the use of chemical dyes and reduce environmental pollution to a certain extent. However, the existing colored cotton is mainly brown and green cotton, with limited options and difficult to meet market demand.

The researchers optimized the codons of three key genes related to betalain synthesis and obtained a new cotton material rich in betalain using the cotton variety "Zhongmian Institute 49" as the receptor. After a series of experiments, betalain was introduced into cotton for the first time and expressed stably. Next, the researchers will conduct further research.