Beeja Arambha – Seed Beginnings

Issue #10, 2023                                                                              ISSN: 2581- 9410 The new story of Indigeneous Brown Cotton in India It is a warm afternoon in the middle of the second lockdown of the pandemic when the team of The Registry of Sarees visits Dr Khadi at his farm in Dharwad. Dr Khadi is a retired scientist from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad and is credited with having “discovered” Natural Brown Coloured Cotton (NBCC). While his role in the story of NBCC is pivotal, the actual narrative of Natural Brown Coloured Cotton goes much further back in India’s history. Team of The Registry Of Sarees at The University of Dharwad, Agricultural Sciences. A Brief Introduction to Brown Cotton The antiquity of cotton in the Indian subcontinent has been traced to the 4th millennium BC  (1)  The first reference to cotton is found in an early Rig Veda hymn (2).The stages of seed cotton, spinning the lint and weaving the yarn are covered in various religious texts, and thus suggesting the implicit use of cotton in India by 1000 BC (3). The fabrics dated approximately 3000 BC recovered from Mohenjodaro excavated in Sind were identified to have originated from cotton plants, closely link to Gossyppium Arboreum species (4) thereby confirming that cotton lint was sp...