Food and Nutrition (Cotton as a Feed and Food Crop)

Cotton is primarily grown for the fibre, used in the textile industry and the oil from the cottonseed. However, cottonseed is considered a major source of vegetable oil worldwide, both as a food crop for humans and a source of protein for ruminant and, to some extent, non-ruminant animals. However, its use is limited due to the presence of a significant hindering polyphenolic anti-nutritional and toxic enzyme called gossypol, which is a terpenoid aldehyde, as well as cyclopropenoid fatty acids (CPFAs) and tannin compounds that make it toxic to humans and mono-gastric animals. Commercially, cottonseed is widely used for its oil, as well as other by-products and as planting material “seed” by farmers. The most well-known by-products of cottonseed are cotton linters, hulls or husks, cakes and meals, oils, and stalks and gin wastes. To maximize the use of these by-products, which are obtained after the challenging process of cottonseed oil extraction, they must undergo additional processes such as caustic or alkali refining, bleaching, winterization, fractionation, hydrogenation or hydration, interesterification and deodourization before they can be used as edible oil or finished consumer goods. The composition of cottonseed oil is mainly made up of fatty acids, and the physicochemical functional and nutritional characteristics of oils; while the fats are largely depend on their fatty acid composition and triglyceride structure. These fatty acids can be classified as saturated if they do not contain double bonds, monounsaturated if they contain one double bond, and polyunsaturated if they have two or more double bonds in the molecule. Cottonseed oil typically contains 47–81% unsaturated fatty acids, including 13–21% monounsaturated (oleic) and 34–60% polyunsaturated (linoleic), as well as 18–35% saturated (palmitic and stearic) fatty acids.