Bananas that stay yellow long after their peers have turned to mush are edging closer to British supermarket shelves. A gene-edited variety developed by Norfolk-based Tropic Biosciences has reached the final approval stage before it can legally be sold, as The Telegraph’s Joe Pinkstone reports.
The Environment Secretary signed off on a marketing notice for the fruit, which resists browning as it ages or gets bruised. Tropic used CRISPR-Cas9 to tweak three genes, stopping the plant from making polyphenol oxidase (PPO), the enzyme behind browning.
The stakes aren’t purely cosmetic. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says browning causes “around 20 percent of banana yield losses,” so curbing it could boost farmer profits and extend shelf life. The variety, Defra adds, “is intended for import, retail, and consumption purposes akin to conventional banana fruit.”
One hurdle remains: Tropic must submit the bananas to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for routine safety checks.
The bananas join a growing list of precision-bred organisms approved by Defra, including longer-fruiting strawberries, vitamin D-rich “sunshine tomatoes,” disease-resistant potatoes and wheat with less of a cancer-linked chemical. The Precision Breeding Act 2022 permits switching off or removing genes but bars inserting DNA from other species, which counts as genetic modification.
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“All new plant varieties go through testing. These crops will be held to the same standards, if not more so,” Cathie Martin, a professor who leads the lab where the tomatoes were developed, previously told The Telegraph.
The bananas won’t need a label identifying them as gene-edited.
