Cotton

Cotton (from Arabic qutn) is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor percentages of waxes, fats, pectins, and water. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds.

The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa, Egypt and India. The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds.

The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable, and durable textile. The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; the presence of Gossypium barbadense has been identified at a site in Nanchoc District Peru, and dated to the 7th-6th millennia BC, while indigo blue dyed textile fragments. dated to the 4th-3th millennia BC, having been found at Huaca Prieta, in Peru, Fragments of a cotton thread, used to connect a string of eight copper beads, and dated to the sixth millennium BC has been found at Mehrgarh, Kachi, Pakistan. Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered the cost of production and led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today.

Current estimates for world production are about 25 million tonnes or 110 million bales annually, accounting for 2.5% of the world's arable land. India is the world's largest producer of cotton. The United States has been the largest exporter for many years.

There are four commercially grown species of cotton, all domesticated in antiquity:

Hybrid varieties are also cultivated. The two New World cotton species account for the vast majority of modern cotton production, but the two Old World species were widely used before the 1900s. While cotton fibers occur naturally in colors of white, brown, pink and green, fears of contaminating the genetics of white cotton have led many cotton-growing locations to ban the growing of colored cotton varieties.

The word "cotton" has Arabic origins, derived from the Arabic word قطن (qutn or qutun) which is ultimately derived from the Hebrew כֻּתֹּנֶת kuttṓnĕṯ, ironically meaning a clothing made of linen. This was the usual word for cotton in medieval Arabic. Marco Polo in chapter 2 in his book, describes a province he calls Khotan in Turkestan, today's Xinjiang, where cotton was grown in abundance. The word entered the Romance languages in the mid-12th century, and English a century later. Cotton fabric was known to the ancient Romans as an import, but cotton was rare in the Romance-speaking lands until imports from the Arabic-speaking lands in the later medieval era at transformatively lowered prices.

The presence of Gossypium barbadense has been identified at a site in Nanchoc District, Peru, and dated to the 7th-6th millenia BC, while Indigo blue dyed textile fragments, dated to the 4th-3th millennia BC, having been found at Huaca Prieta, in Peru, With cultivation of the indigenous cotton species Gossypium barbadense dated, from a find in Ancon, Peru, to c. 4200 BC, and was the backbone of the development of coastal cultures such as the Norte Chico, Moche, and Nazca. Cotton was grown upriver, made into nets, and traded with fishing villages along the coast for large supplies of fish. The Spanish who came to Mexico and Peru in the early 16th century found the people growing cotton and wearing clothing made of it.