Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has instructed key government ministries to identify mechanisms for reviving the nation’s cotton production, which could include growing the genetically modified Bt cotton.
The announcement follows the government’s approval last summer of an environmental assessment that authorized the national performance trials that are required prior to commercial …
It turns out cotton seed is a great source of protein, except it’s currently toxic for humans. Cotton naturally produces gossypol, which is essentially an insecticide. While that helps the plant fight off insects, it also makes it poisonous to humans and most animals. But scientists at Texas A&M University …
Kenya has been losing at least 4,210 cotton farmers every year for the last 38 years due to low returns and importation of cheaper ready fabric from China and India. This translates to 160,000 farmers or 80 per cent of the estimated 200,000 farmers who practiced cotton farming in the …
In the most recent battle in the unending war between farmers and bugs, the bugs are biting back by adapting to crops genetically engineered to kill them.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identifies a dominantly inherited mutation that confers resistance to engineered cotton …
In the 80s and 90s, Kenya cotton industry was thriving with commercial and small scale production in Western, Nyanza, Eastern and Coastal regions relying on the crop for income generation. However, years of neglect and introduction of second hand clothes led to the collapse of both cotton ginneries as well …
Cottonseed ground into flour to deliver protein to millions of people, a project to which Dr. Keerti Rathore has devoted more than half his professional career, is one step closer to reality.
Rathore, a Texas A&M AgriLife Research plant biotechnologist in College Station, received word that Texas A&M’s “Petition for Determination …
The successful introduction of genetically modified cotton in the northern regions would pave the way for trials on other cereals nationwide as a measure to curb food insecurity.
The progressive introduction of Genetically modified organisms (GMO) in Cameroon that started since 2012 has been smooth, Dr. David Akuroh Mbah, Chief Research …
Nigeria’s decision to commercialize Bt cotton has revived hopes for the novel variety in Ghana, its West African neighbor. Science-focused civil society groups are confident Nigeria’s move will serve as a good role model and push players in the agricultural space to resume work on processes to make Bt cotton …
Cotton, once a cash cow in Uganda where growers aspired to outcompete each other in the acreage covered and income earned, could slowly become a crop of the past if nothing is done to curb the steady decline in its production.
According to data from the Cotton Development Organization, Uganda’s lint …
Uganda is the only East African country to witness a consistent decline in cotton production. Though Ethiopia and Kenya experienced the same challenges as Uganda, those two nations responded by embracing cost-cutting Bt technology in cotton cultivation as an urgent measure to revive the sector. Read …
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