The physical properties of arbitrary half-integer spins F = N − 1/2 fermionic cold atoms loaded into a one-dimensional optical lattice are investigated by means of a conformal field theory approach. We show that for attractive interactions two different superfluid phases emerge for F ≥ 3/2: A BCS pairing phase, and a molecular superfluid phase which is formed from bound-states made of 2N fermions. In the low-energy approach, the competition between these instabilities and charge-density waves is described in terms of Z N parafermionic degrees of freedom. The quantum phase transition for F = 3/2, 5/2 is universal and shown to belong to the Ising and three-state Potts universality classes respectively. In contrast, for F ≥ 7/2, the transition is non-universal. For a filling of one atom per site, a Mott transition occurs and the nature of the possible Mott-insulating phases are determined. spins F = N − 1/2 fermionic cold atoms with s-wave scattering interactions loaded into a onedimensional optical lattice. The low-energy physical properties of 2F +1 = 2N -component fermions with contact interactions are known to be described by a Hubbard-like Hamiltonian [5]:where c † α,i (α = 1, ..., 2N ) is the fermion creation operator corresponding to the 2F + 1 = 2N atomic states and n i = α c † α,i c α,i is the density operator on site i. The pairing operators in Eq. (1) are defined through the Clebsch-Gordan coefficients for forming a total spin J from two spin-F fermions: P † JM,i = αβ JM |F, F ; αβ c † α,i c † β,i . The interactions are SU(2) spin-conserving and depend on U J parameters corresponding to the total spin J which takes only even integers value due to Pauli's principle: J = 0, 2, ..., 2N − 2. Even in this simple scheme the interaction pattern is still involved since there are N coupling constants in the general spin-F case. In this paper, we shall consider a two coupling-constant version of model (1) which incorporates the relevant physics of higher-spin degeneracy with respect to the formation of an exotic MS phase. To this end, it is enlightening to express this model in terms of the density n i and the BCS singlet-pairing operator for spin-F which is defined by: P † 00,i =