Product authentication business Applied DNA Sciences (APDN) has received the first international order for its transfer system for cotton.
Applied DNA says it will be installing its patent-pending SigNature T DNA Transfer System at an off-shore gin. The company had been fielding inquiries for DNA tagging of cotton from multiple foreign countries and will have the system installed this quarter in advance of orders for its molecular taggants.
For strategic reasons, Applied DNA says it has decided not to reveal the customer and the location at this time.
“Verified cotton based on forensic science helps to establish provenance with certainty,” says MeiLin Wan, Applied DNA VP for textiles. “The growers and ginners benefit directly by knowing that the cotton that is tagged, tested and tracked ends up in the finished goods that are sold in their home country. They can depend on a sustainable livelihood knowing that the brands and retailers behind the programme are their champions, enabling for continuous planting of cotton, ginning and production for future generations.
“You don’t get to true sustainability without traceability on the fibre itself. We are seeing a shift from reliance on a paper trail that documents unverified fibre, to a new standard based on transparency from the fibre forward, linking all parts of the value chain with our information-rich molecular traceability system.”
The SigNature T DNA Transfer System can be installed within the gin’s normal processes. The system provides over 60 data points per minute to a company’s CertainT IT platform to monitor, record and audit the quantity of tagged bales and the quality of tagged bales associated with each USDA (or other) bale identification number. The partners in the network use the data to manage tagged bale inventory, bale shipments and lab test results for samples.
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By GlobalDataAccording to Applied DNA, evidence obtained from quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR) tests to date indicate that essentially every fibre that passes through the gin while the DNA Transfer System is operating is exposed to SigNature T DNA. Quantitative PCR, used for the company’s SigNature T, and our fiberTyping and GeoTyping platforms allow the forensic detection of dilution of the original fibres at any point in the supply chain. The company’s SigNify qPCR system enables testing on-site by trained, certified personnel.
The SigNature T system and supply chain protocols are designed to assure the “purity and integrity” of any cotton whose global source of origin leads to unique performance or claims. Countries with large cotton economies often want to market finished goods based on the use of cotton exclusively from the country. In the markets of the US, Egypt, Turkey, Peru, China, Australia and India, preference is often given to cotton grown in the home country. The maintenance of intact supply chains, with forensic proof of origin can lead to substantiation of ancillary claims such as sustainable sourcing or the exclusion of cotton fibres that may have been obtained with labour derived from human trafficking.
Over 100m data points are being captured per season from the gins into the CertainT Textile Portal and over 3,000 SigNature T tests have been conducted since 2015. The company says testing will increase consequent to the establishment of its lab in India. The gin data and reports are shared with the company’s partners and customers, via the CertainT systems platform, configurable for third-party systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning or blockchain networks.
