Technical Information
Biotech Cotton
The current generation of biotech crops express extraneous genes derived from other organisms, that were stably integrated into their genome. Commercialised biotech crops were first introduced in a virus-resistant tobacco in 1992 in China, and genetically modified cotton made its debut four years later.
In 2017, biotech cotton was grown on 24.07 million hectares, which accounted for 80% of the global cotton area. To date, commercialised biotech cotton comprises only two traits: insect resistance (Bt-cotton) and herbicide tolerance (HT-cotton).