Edible Cotton May Be Cultivated Soon, Bloomberg Reports

Edible cottonseeds have been approved for commercial cultivation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and await Food and Drug Administration approval, according to Bloomberg. Texas A&M University has reportedly been developing the product—which apparently tastes “like hummus”—for more than two decades. Bloomberg compares the nutritional value of cottonseeds to other tree nuts such as almonds or walnuts; in addition, cottonseeds could be “fed to carnivorous fish like salmon and trout that eat ground-up fish,” according to the article. The university’s work “opens up the opportunity that eventually every cotton plant will have this technology in it,” a vice president at Cotton Inc. reportedly told Bloomberg. “There’s no reason to leave a toxin in a domesticated plant.”