Latest news with #GiladGershon
Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A New Banana Is Coming to Stores—and Scientists Claim It Doesn't Brown
A UK-based company has engineered a banana that doesn't brown and stays fresh for longer. This is when you can expect to see the banana in grocery stores, including those in the United States. There's nothing like the disappointment of coming home with a haul of fresh fruit, only to discover half of it has browned or rotten within a couple of days. Now, thanks to science, those days of tossing out fruit preemptively may soon be a thing of the past. A UK-based biotech company called Tropic has successfully engineered a banana that remains fresher for longer—12 hours after it's been peeled, to be exact. How is this possible? They used a gene editing technique called CRISPR to disable the enzyme responsible for making bananas turn brown. Similar to how apples and potatoes change colors once cut, the browning we see in bananas is due to oxidation, and is not a reliable indicator of a banana's ripeness. Gilad Gershon, co-founder of Tropic, told AgFunderNews, "The bananas have the same taste, smell, sweetness profile, the same everything, except that the flesh doesn't go brown as quickly, which means you can add them to fruit salads and cut fruit products, opening up a huge new market.' While genetically modified non-browning apples have been around for a decade, bananas present a unique challenge. Nearly all the bananas consumed in the United States belong to the Cavendish subgroup, which is seedless and can only reproduce through cloning. Yes, that means the bananas from today are essentially genetically identical to the ones from the 1960s. As a result, selecting genes for desirable traits is nearly impossible since all the bananas are virtually the same. This discovery not only opens up more possibilities for modifying bananas to improve disease resistance and extend shelf-life (which Tropic is already working on), but it may also make a huge impact in reducing food waste and lowering global greenhouse gas emissions. Nearly 33% of the world's harvested agriculture goes to waste—including almost 60% of banana biomass after harvesting. Tropic believes its non-browning bananas "have the potential to significantly reduce food waste and CO2 emissions along the supply chain by more than 25%," which the company suggests is "a reduction in CO2 emissions equivalent to removing 2 million passenger vehicles from the road each year." The new non-browning bananas have already been approved for commercial sale in the Philippines, Colombia, Honduras, the United States, and Canada, so we can expect to see them in stores before the end of the year. I know, I know—browned bananas are the secret workhorse of some of our favorite treats like banana bread, banana cream pie, and more. But now, we can have perfectly ripe bananas that aren't mushy and brown. This is more than a win for our kitchens, it's a win for our food systems and planet, too. Read the original article on ALLRECIPES
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A Banana That Won't Brown So Fast? Scientists Just Made It Happen
Scientists used CRISPR gene editing to create a banana that stays yellow longer, reducing food waste and extending shelf life. The biotech company Tropic says this innovation could cut carbon emissions significantly and prevent millions of bananas from being wasted. Approved for sale in multiple countries, including the United States and Canada, the banana is expected to hit store shelves by world can feel like a pretty bleak place right now. But you know what has the power to cheer you up? A delicious banana. And scientists have even developed one that stays fresher for longer, promising to stave off the dreaded "brown banana" period for a little longer. In March, Tropic Biosciences, a UK-based biotech company, unveiled its new gene-edited banana that promises to remain yellow for longer, not only ensuring you can enjoy it for a few extra days but also helping to reduce food waste in the process. "Tropic's non-browning bananas have the potential to significantly reduce food waste and CO2 emissions along the supply chain by more than 25%, as over 60% of exported bananas go to waste before reaching the consumer," the company shared in a statement about the banana. "This innovative product can support a reduction in CO2 emissions equivalent to removing 2 million passenger vehicles from the road each year." Related: Meet Yelloway One, Chiquita's New Disease-Resistant Banana According to Gilad Gershon, the co-founder of Tropic, the team used CRISPR gene editing techniques to disable a gene that creates the enzyme polyphenol oxidase, which causes bananas to turn brown. 'After several years of development, we started production of [non-browning] seedlings about a year ago, and we're now starting to offer significant quantities of these banana plants to farmers," Gershon shared with AgFunderNews. 'The bananas have the same taste, smell, sweetness profile, the same everything, except that the flesh doesn't go brown as quickly, which means you can add them to fruit salads and cut fruit products, opening up a huge new market.' Importantly, Gershon noted that this will help companies buy at "least 10 extra days, which is huge for the banana industry." The company more specifically told The Guardian that the banana will stay yellow for up to 12 hours after it's peeled. Gershon additionally told AgFunderNews that the banana has been approved for sale in several countries, including the U.S. and Canada, and should be ready to roll out to store shelves sometime in 2025. Related: How to Cook Anything in a Banana Leaf While it may seem like a trivial scientific endeavor, it really is one with far-reaching positive consequences. According to a 2021 study in Horticulture Research, nearly one-third of bananas harvested are never consumed. That aligns with data that shows about one-third of the food the world produces also goes to waste. Or, as the World Resources Institute bluntly put it, "It means that an amount of land larger than China is used every year to produce food that no one will eat." But this new banana could be a major step toward improving these metrics. While it all sounds very futuristic, The Guardian pointed out that it's not the first fruit to get this treatment. The same gene was also edited out of Arctic apples, which have been sold in the U.S. since 2017. And just in case you're nervous about all the science put into this little fruit, know the Food and Drug Administration has this to say about genetically modified food: "GMO foods are carefully studied before they are sold to the public to ensure they are as safe as the foods we currently eat ... studies show that GMOs do not affect you differently than non-GMO foods." So go ahead, and enjoy that bright yellow banana. Read the original article on Food & Wine
Telegraph
12-03-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
The new super bananas that get old
Gene editing has long been touted as one of the next frontiers of food production, but the future is finally here. Tropic, a biotech firm based near Norwich, is launching a revolutionary product this month: the non-browning banana. After 10,000 years of humans enduring bananas that go brown, our ingenuity has finally provided a solution. The new variant of the fruit has taken years of research. Using a proprietary technique called Geigs (gene editing induced gene silencing), similar to Crispr (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), Tropic has modified the Cavendish banana – the variety that comprises 99 per cent of all the bananas eaten in the UK – so its flesh does not go brown. Until now, bananas have been unwelcome guests in a fruit salad, becoming unappealingly sludgy within minutes of being undressed. 'They have the same taste, smell, sweetness profile, the same everything, except that the flesh doesn't go brown as quickly, which means you can add them to fruit salads and cut-fruit products, opening up a huge new market,' says Gilad Gershon, Tropic's co-founder. 'This is very exciting to the industry as, historically, you wouldn't include bananas, which are very popular fruits, in a prepared fruit selection in a store, because they go brown too quickly.' Browning is triggered by polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme that catalyses the oxidation of certain compounds in the banana's flesh. By 'cutting out' the genes responsible for the enzyme, Tropic's scientists have slowed the browning process. This gene editing is different from other forms of genetic modification, in which new genes are introduced from other species, and typically comes with fewer regulatory obstacles. Tropic says the change only affects the colour, it won't change the sweetness. Your banana will still get old, it just won't get so brown. Tropic predicts the non-browning banana – which has been approved in the United States and Canada, and it hopes soon in the UK – will reduce food waste and save millions of tons in carbon emissions. This is only the first in a series of edited bananas Tropic has planned. By the end of this year, it also hopes to release its extended-shelf-life bananas, which stay green for up to 10 days longer, making them easier to transport. Tropic is also working on versions that are resistant to Panama and Black Sigatoka disease. Any talk of 'Frankenfruit' brings out the sceptics. But Cavendish bananas are already the mutant children of centuries of tinkering. They do not produce seeds, and are instead propagated from cuttings so they are all practically identical, making them extremely vulnerable to diseases. Tropic's bananas are not the first gene-edited product – a Crispr-edited tomato has been on sale in Japan since 2021 and edited soybeans are also available – and they certainly will not be the last. But the banana is Britain's most popular supermarket item, a green and yellow emblem of globalisation: cheap, tasty, nutritious and amusing to eat. It has quietly achieved supremacy while traditional British crops have fallen by the wayside. Over the past 50 years, the average consumption of turnips has plummeted, while banana consumption has more than doubled. Today, British households get through around 25kg of them per year. For Tropic and the other companies busily editing fruit and veg, the potential market is too big to ignore. When it comes to bananas, it pays to stay ahead of the curve. This week's specials Portable cooking just gained a new status symbol. Somerset Grill Co 's Asado Go! is a wood-fired grill small enough to be carried around. Just the thing for turning your corner of the beach into San Sebastian (£895). Entries are now open for the British Library 's Food Season Awards, which this year include a new prize for writing, sponsored by the online magazine Vittles. The winner will receive £1,500 and access to the library's collections. Harvey Nichols is making a play for the north London crowd by welcoming Trullo, the Islington Italian, for a three-month residency. Among the new dishes will be tagliarini with caviar. Patsy and Edina would approve.
