‘Tastes like hummus’
“Not at all unpleasant” isn’t exactly high praise when it comes to taste, but a new edible variety of cotton could play a major role in feeding the world’s hungry. As Fortune reports, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently approved the genetically engineered plant as food.
People won’t be choking down the crop’s round, fluffy white bolls, which are spun into the most widely used natural fibre on the planet. It’s the peanut-sized, protein-packed cottonseed that holds promise as a foodstuff.
A tree nut, the seed’s nutritional profile is similar to others in the family, including almonds and cashews, according to Fortune, and similar applications could be imminent (e.g. cottonseed milk and butter, cookies and crackers).
“It’ll taste like hummus,” Keerti Rathore, a plant biotechnologist at Texas A&M University, told Fortune. “It’s not at all unpleasant.”
Rathore has spent the last 23 years trying to create a cotton plant with edible seeds. Regular cotton isn’t a viable source of food because its seeds contain high levels of gossypol, a poisonous compound.
“Gossypol in and of itself is a toxin,” Greg Holt, USDA research leader for cotton production and processing, told NPR’s The Salt. “It’s helpful for the cotton plant, because it helps fend off insect pests. But it makes the seed unhealthy for people to eat. It’s toxic to most animals, too. So there are limited options for the 40 million tons of cottonseed that stream out of cotton gins around the world each year.”
Although the USDA has approved the new cotton and anyone in the country can grow it, U.S. Food and Drug Administration consent is required before farmers can sow it for food or animal feed purposes. Texas A&M University reportedly anticipates the green light “within months.”
Rathore told AgriLife that the new plant produces 726 grams (1.6 lb) of edible cottonseed for every pound (454 grams) of fibre. According to the Food Aid Foundation, roughly 795 million people (one in nine) in the world are food insecure. When ground into flour, cottonseed could serve as a significant protein source.
“Growing up in rural India as the son of a doctor, I (saw) the effects of malnutrition firsthand in my father’s patients,” he said. “Our approach, based on the removal of a naturally occurring, toxic compound from the cottonseed, not only improves its safety but also provides a novel means to meet the nutritional requirements of the burgeoning world population.”