Bananas That Don't Go Brown To Hit Supermarkets Thanks to DNA Editing
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: It is the bane of every fruit bowl: sliced banana that turns brown before it has reached the table. But such woes could soon be a thing of the past, with gene-edited bananas that keep their freshly peeled color now one step closer to reaching British shoppers. According to Tropic, the Norwich-based agricultural-biotechnology company that…
An anonymous source reports that sliced bananas that turn brown even before reaching the table could soon be a thing of the past in Britain. This is thanks to gene-edited bananas developed by Tropic, an agricultural biotechnology company based in Norwich. According to the company's chief executive, Gilad Gershon, these bananas maintain a fresh, yellow, and appetizing appearance for an extra day or two, and even longer if refrigerated.
This innovation could make it easier to incorporate bananas into prepackaged products like fruit salads and breakfast pots, while also reducing waste. Tropic achieved this by using a gene-editing technology called Crispr-Cas9 to modify all three copies of a single gene within the fruit, thereby reducing the production of an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase, which causes browning.
This method has been successful in reducing browning in other foods, such as mushrooms. The non-browning bananas could potentially cut food waste and CO2-equivalent emissions along the supply chain by more than 25%. This, in turn, could result in an annual reduction of over 9 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in the banana export market alone, according to the company.
Tropic has already received regulatory approval for these non-browning bananas in 10 other countries, including Japan, Brazil, and the Philippines, and they are currently being cultivated in Latin America.
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