The Crop Journal study showcases CRISPR/CAS genome editing for high-quality cotton

Cotton genome editing, especially in elite varieties, has proven difficult. Now, in a study published in The Crop Journal, researchers from China have successfully demonstrated CRISPR/Cas genome editing in nonregenerative cotton via sexual hybridization. This work opens up a novel technical avenue for the genetic improvement of elite cotton varieties that are recalcitrant to tissue culture, advancing agriculture and biotechnology.

Gossypol, a toxic chemical in cotton, has severely limited the utilization of cottonseed protein, which constitutes a tremendous waste of resources. Eliminating this toxicity can help turn a waste product into a valuable resource. Moreover, although scientists have developed a vast array of genome editing tools, they cannot be efficiently applied to cotton varieties with excellent agronomic traits. Overcoming this issue of genotype dependence and enabling advanced biotechnologies to serve the genetic improvement of elite varieties is of great interest.

Recently, a team of researchers from China led by Dr. Shuangxia Jin from Hubei Hongshan Laboratory, National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, has successfully established a genotype-independent genome editing delivery strategy. Their findings were made available online in The Crop Journal on March 27, 2026.

"For a long time, cotton genome editing has been hampered by the bottleneck of tissue culture and regeneration, making it unfeasible to perform direct genome editing on the vast majority of elite varieties, especially elite long-staple cotton—Gossypium barbadense L.—via traditional approaches," Jin explains. 

The team innovatively utilized sexual hybridization to transfer the CRISPR/Cas editing system from regenerable donor Gossypium hirsutum L. 'Jin668' to recalcitrant elite recipient Gossypium barbadense L. 'Hai-7124'.

"This approach not only successfully transcended species boundaries—from Gossypium hirsutum to Gossypium barbadense—to achieve efficient genome editing via knockout of the GbPGF gene to generate the glandless phenotype, but was also verified through backcrossing and whole-genome resequencing," adds Jin.

Notably, the team successfully restored the excellent agronomic traits, such as fiber quality, of the recurrent parent while retaining the target edited trait.

The present achievement is akin to performing "genetic minimally invasive surgery" on cotton. Earlier, CRISPR could only be used on a tiny number of donor cotton varieties with a special genetic background. In contrast, those elite varieties or recipients that scientists aim to improve—ones that produce high-value long-staple cotton—were largely unable to undergo such surgery due to the failure to regenerate via tissue culture.

Instead of forcibly performing surgery on these elite cotton varieties, the present approach is to let the cotton with the special genetic background carrying the surgical tools crossbreed with the elite cotton varieties. This set of surgical tools is then passed down to their progeny like a family heirloom. As the progeny grow, the tools inside their bodies function autonomously to precisely excise the undesirable deleterious genes. The researchers then subject this progeny to successive backcrosses with the elite cotton line, and the resulting offspring ultimately retain all the excellent agronomic traits of the elite line while having the undesirable deleterious genes eliminated.

"Our study holds  practical application value," says Jin. "By knocking out pigment gland formation genes such as GbPGF, we can breed cotton varieties with an extremely low gossypol content in seeds. This will enable protein-rich cotton seeds to be used as human food or feed for monogastric animals, greatly enhancing the value of cotton by-products and alleviating the shortage of protein resources."

Moreover, Gossypium barbadense boasts excellent fiber quality but has low yield and is extremely difficult to improve via biotechnological approaches. The proposed technology enables genome editing in elite varieties via hybridization-mediated transfer of CRISPR systems to introduce disease resistance, insect resistance, and high-yield traits without compromising their inherent superior fiber characteristics.

Lastly, this study can accelerate the breeding process. Combined with greenhouse "speed breeding" technology, the proposed strategy enables the completion of multiple rounds of backcrossing in a relatively short period of time, which will significantly shorten the breeding cycle of new varieties.

In the long term, the findings are expected to contribute to protein supply, facilitate the upgrading of the textile industry, and aid in breaking genotype limitations, accelerating the overall advancement of agricultural biotechnology.

###

Contact the author:

Shuangxia Jin

E-mail address: yangguangming@caas.cn

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 200 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).