By Rachel Cramer
In his office at Iowa State University, Jonathan Wendel slides open a small box to reveal fluffy white fibers spilling out of a seed pod. The distinguished professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology explains this is Gossypium hirsutum – more commonly known as upland cotton.
The species accounts for 90% of the cotton grown today. Manufacturers turn its fibers into t-shirts, paper money and medical dressings while its byproducts are used in makeup, salad dressing and livestock feed.
Wendel opens a second box with fibers that are shorter, coarser and tan. Researchers collected this and other seed pods from wild cotton in the eastern Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Wendel describes the plants as woody perennial shrubs with few flowers, which typically grow near sand dunes.
“[Humans] took this wild, rangy-looking, not very useful plant, and transformed it into this high-yielding, abundant, most important fiber plant in the world,” Wendel said.
Wendel has been studying the origins of upland cotton for 40 years. His prior work suggested the Yucatán was a likely candidate for the center of domestication. But this was confirmed for the first time in a recent paper that Wendel co-authored with 19 other researchers in the U.S., Mexico, Europe and China.
The researchers estimated the initial domestication began roughly 5,000 years ago.
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