Multicoloured cotton fields could be on the horizon
HYDROCOLTON, a pioneering textile sustainability initiative funded by the European Research Council, set out to make cotton plants produce coloured crops as they grow.
CORDIS reports these research details:
HYDROCOLTON, a pioneering textile sustainability initiative funded by the European Research Council, set out to make cotton plants produce coloured crops as they grow. By altering how cotton absorbs, or expresses, pigments internally, the project targets a complete phase-out of the heavy water and chemical processing required downstream.
The team put specially designed, glucose-derived molecules into the water. These molecules were naturally transported through the plant and reached the developing cotton fibres, where they became incorporated during growth.
The HYDROCOLTON project is exploring the technology in real agricultural settings using hydroponic cotton production, which provides a simplified and highly controlled system for testing. The source publication or update date used for this record is 2026-07-29.
