American Journal of Molecular Biology, 2020, 10, 91-127 https://www.scirp.org/journal/ajmb ISSN Online: 2161-6663 ISSN Print: 2161-6620 DOI: 10.4236/ajmb.2020.102008 Feb. 17, 2020 91 American Journal of Molecular Biology The Tale of Cotton Plant: From Wild Type to Domestication, Leading to Its Improvement by Genetic Transformation Sabin Aslam 1,2* , Sultan Habibullah Khan 3 , Aftab Ahmed 3 , Abhaya M. Dandekar 2 1 Center of Agricultural Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan 2 Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA, USA 3 Center of Advanced Studies in Agriculture and Food Security, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan Abstract Cotton is considered as a major cash crop of the world. It earns huge foreign exchange by its valuable products; fiber, lint, cotton seed oil, hull and a lot more. Being an important fiber crop, it earns huge foreign exchange by con- tributing to textile and seed oil industry. This review summarizes cotton bi- ology, its diversity and domestication, genome assembly, constraints in its production and methods to improve cotton plant to fulfill the need of textile and oil industry. But cotton is facing enormous biotic and abiotic stresses with insect pests being most prominent. Massive destruction caused by in- sects needs to be controlled for maintaining fruitful cotton crop production. Conventional breeding approaches are limited to improving single trait and integrate stable genes within plant genome in approximately 7 - 8 years. Im- proved biotechnological procedures have paved new pathways to target genes specifically and improve cotton germplasm in lesser time than conventional breeding. Keywords Cotton, Colored Cotton, Cotton Domestication, Genetic Diversity, Transformation 1. Introduction Cotton is considered as the world’s most important fiber producing crop. It not only supports textile industry by providing fiber but also supports oil industry by producing high quality oil. It is a major source of proteins (30% - 40%) to be fed How to cite this paper: Aslam, S., Khan, S.H., Ahmed, A. and Dandekar, A.M. (2020) The Tale of Cotton Plant: From Wild Type to Domestication, Leading to Its Improvement by Genetic Transformation. American Journal of Molecular Biology, 10, 91-127. https://doi.org/10.4236/ajmb.2020.102008 Received: April 28, 2019 Accepted: February 14, 2020 Published: February 17, 2020 Copyright © 2020 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access