Cotton, Malvaceae, cotton. Annual herbs or perennial shrubs are herbaceous cotton or kapok. There are four kinds of cotton cultivated in China: upland cotton, island cotton, Asian cotton (Zhongmian) and grass cotton. Upland cotton is also known as fine wool cotton, because of its high yield, slender fiber and strong adaptability; island cotton, also known as long staple cotton, is a kind of long, thin, smooth and high strength cotton fiber, but its yield is relatively low; Asian cotton originated in India, has a long cultivation history in China, with a small planting area, and is basically reserved as a seed source; grass cotton, also known as African cotton, has a lower yield than Asian cotton. People's first impression of cotton is white. However, there are colored fibers in all four kinds of cultivated cotton, that is, colored cotton. Natural colored cotton is not a new textile variety. The Asian cotton species once planted in China has brown fiber colored cotton, also known as purple cotton. With the development of color demand and printing technology, white cotton has gradually occupied the market of natural color cotton because of its high color dyeability. Nowadays, people pay more and more attention to health and environmental protection materials, and natural colored cotton is back to people's vision.
Today's natural colored cotton is cultivated through biotechnology such as hybridization and transgenic. At present, the technology of gene modification is very mature. When different color genes are implanted into cotton plants, various kinds of colorful cotton can be obtained in the natural growth process. Compared with white cotton, natural colored cotton is more healthy and environmentally friendly, because the processes of dyeing, bleaching, boiling and refining are omitted in the production and manufacturing process, and there is no harmful chemical substance to avoid harm to human body and environment.
The advantages of natural colored cotton in color and material characteristics make it popular in the field of textile and clothing. But there are some limitations in its own characteristics, such as uneven color, poor color stability, single color, low output, poor quality and so on.