This agreement will enable the textile manufacturer and its large retail partners to assure quality and preserve the integrity of the textile supply chain, starting from the grower to the consumer, the company reports.

 Unique marker

The SigNature T commercial programme involves the creation of a unique, SigNature T DNA marker that will be used to mark the customer's annual demand of Extra Long Staple Pima cotton at the ginning stage.

Once marked, the premium Pima cotton fibre may be authenticated for textile identity along any node in the supply chain, from grower to ginner to spinner to manufacturer to distributor to retailer. The company calls this approach to managing textile identity in the supply chain Fiber Forward.

 Extra long staple cotton

Pima or Extra Long Staple (ELS) cotton is a highly valued, luxuriously long fibre that represents about 5% of the overall US cotton output, the equivalent of an estimated US 1.25 billion per year industry in the United States.

Production of all types of cotton fibre is a US 25 billion-per-year industry in the US, employing over 200,000 people.

Once the Pima cotton is marked following each step of the process, its textile identity will be tested accumulating provenance data linking the original cotton fibre to finished product, preserving the authenticity of the product and the integrity of the supply chain.

Traceable and transparent supply chain

“The kind of value that comes from a trusted, traceable and transparent supply chain is immeasurable, and we know consumers respond well to brands they trust, and even more to products they know will wear and launder well,” said MeiLin Wan, Executive Director for Apparel and Textiles, Applied DNA Sciences.

“Every moment of our daily lives involves a textile - from the bed sheets you woke up in, to the wrinkle free cotton oxford shirt you wear with that wool suit, to the upholstered fabric in the car you drove to work in, to the carpet in your office.”

Applied DNA Sciences

 APDN is a provider of botanical-DNA based security and authentication solutions and services that are designed to protect products, brands, entire supply chains, and intellectual property of companies, governments and consumers from theft, counterfeiting, fraud and diversion.

SigNature DNA describes the uncopyable marker that is at the heart of all of our security and authentication solutions. It is at the core of a family of products such as DNAnet, the company’s anti-theft product, SigNature T, targeted toward textiles, and digitalDNA, providing powerful track and trace.

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