In 1953, she joined the U.S.D.A.’s Southern Regional Research Center in New Orleans, where she remained until her retirement in 1986. Her early work was in the center’s intravenous fat program, where she helped develop a fat emulsion, originally designed for wounded soldiers in the Korean War, with which long-term hospital patients could be fed. In 1958, she became the leader of the center’s cotton chemical reactions laboratory.

Cotton’s penchant for wrinkling is inscribed in its DNA. Cotton is a cellulose fiber, and cellulose is a polymer. Like all polymers, cellulose has a chainlike structure, comprising long strands of glucose molecules. Hydrogen bonds tie the glucose together.

These hydrogen bonds are weak and easily broken. (Washing breaks them handily.) When the bonds break, the structure of the chains is no longer secure, causing the molecules within them to shift and the fabric to wrinkle.

True permanent press — the term properly describes cloth that is a blend of cotton and synthetic fibers — was invented in the mid-20th century, but for textile makers, a no-iron, 100-percent cotton fabric was a long-sought grail. A few such fabrics had been developed, but they still needed touch-ups with an iron on emerging from the dryer.

Dr. Benerito refined these earlier fabrics by attacking cotton’s weakest link. With her colleagues, she developed a process called cross-linking, which replaced the ineffectual hydrogen bonds with stronger ones. The new chemical bonds act like the sturdy rungs of a ladder, snapping the polymer chains back to crisp, unwrinkled attention.

Treated this way, the resulting fabric (also known by names like durable press and wash-and-wear) needed little or no ironing. Cross-linking, which lets a range of chemicals be affixed to polymer chains, also made possible later developments including stain-resistant and flame-retardant cotton.

After retiring from the U.S.D.A., Dr. Benerito joined the faculty of the University of New Orleans, teaching there until she was 81.