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The US Food and Drug Administration announced this month that a genetically modified cottonseed has been green-lighted for human consumption. Researchers engineered the cotton plants to block the activity of the gene for an enzyme called δ-cadinene synthase in their seeds, which in turn prevents the seeds from making a toxin called gossypol. The plant had already been deregulated by the US Department of Agriculture last year.
Last week, we spoke with Keerti Rathore, a plant scientist at Texas A&M, about why he saw a need for edible cottonseed, and how his team developed it.
Keerti Rathore: I came to Texas A&M about 24 years ago. And cotton was something that I was not very familiar with. . . . [But] I started to read literature on cotton. And one thing that really jumped out was this problem of gossypol, which is a toxic terpenoid present ...
