Cotton's roots traced to Yucatan Peninsula, where wild gene pool runs deepest

There's nothing like this in nature, Jonathan Wendel said as he showed a visitor in his Bessey Hall office the long white puffs billowing from a cotton boll—the protective flower capsule of the plant cultivated by humans for thousands of years.

In the wild, cotton bolls are far smaller and hold darker, coarser and shorter fibers. ...