Bananas That Don't Go Brown To Hit Supermarkets Thanks to DNA Editing (theguardian.com) 159
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 developed the fruit, the bananas have the same taste and texture but stay "fresh, yellow and appetizing long after peeling and slicing."
Gilad Gershon, the chief executive of Tropic, said the flesh of the new banana resisted browning for an extra day or two -- and longer if chilled. He added that the innovation could make it easier to add bananas to prepackaged products such as fruit salads and breakfast pots, as well as reducing waste. [...] Tropic developed the bananas by using a gene-editing technology called Crispr-Cas9 to alter all three copies of a single gene within the fruit. As a result, they were able to reduce the production of polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme that causes browning. A similar approach has been effective in reducing browning in other produce, including mushrooms.
Tropic said the non-browning bananas could reduce food waste and CO2-equivalent emissions along the supply chain by more than 25%. "This could support an annual reduction in CO2 emissions of over 9m tonnes in the banana export market alone," the company said. [...] Gershon said Tropic had gained regulatory approval for the non-browning bananas in 10 other countries including Japan, Brazil and the Philippines. The fruit is already being grown in Latin America.
Gilad Gershon, the chief executive of Tropic, said the flesh of the new banana resisted browning for an extra day or two -- and longer if chilled. He added that the innovation could make it easier to add bananas to prepackaged products such as fruit salads and breakfast pots, as well as reducing waste. [...] Tropic developed the bananas by using a gene-editing technology called Crispr-Cas9 to alter all three copies of a single gene within the fruit. As a result, they were able to reduce the production of polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme that causes browning. A similar approach has been effective in reducing browning in other produce, including mushrooms.
Tropic said the non-browning bananas could reduce food waste and CO2-equivalent emissions along the supply chain by more than 25%. "This could support an annual reduction in CO2 emissions of over 9m tonnes in the banana export market alone," the company said. [...] Gershon said Tropic had gained regulatory approval for the non-browning bananas in 10 other countries including Japan, Brazil and the Philippines. The fruit is already being grown in Latin America.
Fresh food is so last year. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fresh food is so last year. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think they are talking about the browning of the skin as it ripens, they seem to be talking about the browning of the cut surface of the inside like when making a fruit salad. Generally I find lemon juice on the surface prevents browning for long enough to keep the dish looking good.
I'd rather this didn't come to market - I don't trust that editing genes will only have the intended effect, nor that we won't lose somthing vital by not having the banana produce polyphenol oxidase.
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I don't think they are talking about the browning of the skin as it ripens, they seem to be talking about the browning of the cut surface of the inside like when making a fruit salad. Generally I find lemon juice on the surface prevents browning for long enough to keep the dish looking good.
As it stands, even without the lemon juice, the bananas I seem to get from the supermarket these days pretty much don't seem to brown very quickly anyway. As long as they don't have to sit in a fruit salad for too long, there isn't really a problem.
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Lately, I've been ending up with bananas that don't fully yellow. Going brown while still having a lot of green skin.
Re: Fresh food is so last year. (Score:2)
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I didn't know about this stuff, and would rather eat better tasting bananas and def not gmo. But, I found out from googling that actually bananas have a lot of polyphenol oxidas (PPO) and if you eat it at the same time as berries and good antioxidant flavanoids, the PPO breaks it all down within an hour even in your stomach. You need to not mix them, or eat them like 2 hours apart, or you can process the bananas with heat etc. Lemon only slows it like 15%. Even if they aren't brown they have the PPO. So act
Re: Fresh food is so last year. (Score:2)
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I've never liked bananas, so this won't really affect me, but like you, I'd prefer this didn't come to market.
The UK's historically not been keen on GM food. Unless there's some way they can avoid having to label these as 'modified', I can't see them flying off the shelves in supermarkets - for most people, I can't see it being such a huge advantage that it would be worth 'risking' it. I could see supermarkets like M&S/Waitrose, etc actively marketing that they *don't* have these.
However, that's only on
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This is bananas! (Score:3)
Well, I mean it is. A gene edit, aka a targeted mutation to fix a specific well-studied issue .. no big deal. It's still a banana.
Re: This is bananas! (Score:2)
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It annoys me so much that stores almost never carry anything except Cavendish, as if it were the only banana cultivar on Earth. :P
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This is mostly a temperate/cold climate countries' problem. The reason is Cavendish being by far the most favorable species to export, due to it's durability during transport and on the shelf.
Where I live (a huge producing region), stores will have something around 5 varieties of them according to the season of the year.
Amazing (Score:2)
"could" (Score:4, Interesting)
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You very politely skirt around the edges of the issue - this bullshit is nothing less than a crime against humanity.
That seems to be all the rage these days, so long as there's a profit to be made. In fact, since we've decided that profit is our only virtue, there's an argument to be made that *NOT* pursuing every available avenue toward profit, however vile, is itself a crime against humanity.
stupid idea (Score:2)
I need to know when it is time to make banana bread.
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This is about the browning of the flesh of peeled bananas, not the browning of the skin of unpeeled bananas.
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That makes no sense because fresh peeled bananas are immediately consumed.
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Please, for the love of God, read the article...
Rebranding GMOs as precision breeding (Score:5, Interesting)
The Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act of 2023 reclassified some GMOs as “precision bred organisms (PBOs),” defined as those that “could have resulted from traditional processes”.
Intellectual property lawyer Michael Edenborough described this terminology as “staggeringly imprecise”, and the precision of the process itself has also been called into question.
The name 'precision breeding' is also misleading as it does not involve breeding, but rather the manipulation of genes in laboratories. This could be achieved through a process known as 'gene editing' but is not limited to such techniques.
The lack of a scientific definition of precision breeding is a stroke of political genius – anything 'could' happen! Anything is possible!
Don't fix it if it ain't broke. (Score:3)
Brown bananas have a great number of valid uses:
- banana bread
- banana muffins
- banana pancakes
- smoothies
- baked banana desserts
- cakes of all kinds
- cookies
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Yet another person misreads the article.
So they do not go ripe? (Score:2)
Why would I eat something like that? Non-ripe bananas I can really do without.
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Not "nonripe". Fully ripe. They just down turn brown quickly after peeling; you don't need lemon juice to suppress the browning.
This isn't about ripening at all, it's about the oxidation of the peeled flesh.
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Reading comprehension fail.
No Thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Many disagree about good enough, ask for labeling (Score:2)
No, just no, stop messing with things that are fine as they are.
Many think bananas perish too fast. If they want to GMO some more shelf-stable bananas, it will allow farmers to sell more crops and more people to enjoy them. There are countless benefits to produce that is more robust to transmit. VERY FEW of us live anywhere near where bananas actually grow. Now...if you've got some hatred for GMO foods?...fine...let's just label things and let the market decide.
I don't want to force you to eat GMOs if it's against your beliefs. However, don't scold those who ar
Won't someone think of the Banana bread? (Score:2)
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This is, once again, NOT about ripening, it's about oxidation of the flesh after you cut it open. Please, people READ.
Another use case (Score:2)
It seems now grocery chains can consider selling "single-serving" bananas that are pre-peeled in the factory then packaged in a transparent polypropylene shell for transport and shelf display.
If only there was a bio-degradable, made-to-measure, protective packaging method that kept a banana fresh, non-brown, and ready to eat for a day or so.....
how we got there (Score:2)
so does this make the bananas taste crispr?
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You have to store them in your crispr drawer.
But why? (Score:2)
When I buy bananas, I don't peel them until I'm ready to eat them. And when I do peel a banana, I eat it in one sitting.
If they're a little bit brown, it's no big deal... they're still fine for eating. And if they're very brown and mushy, they're still usable for making banana bread. I don't understand the phobia against a little bit of browning.
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This isn't about homes, their focus is on commercial buyers, who want to e.g. include bananas in fruit salads and whatnot.
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That and simply how much fresh food has been recalled lately.
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That doesn't taste like wood.
I'm not sure where you're getting your produce... but the fruit I buy doesn't have this problem.
Except I do see your point regarding oranges. I haven't tasted a good navel orange in a couple decades; I basically just don't buy them anymore.
Re:How about fruit (Score:5, Informative)
It's HLB [wikipedia.org]. Really sucks :( First detected in Florida in 2005 (was probably there earlier, as the asian citrus psyllid was detected in 1998, and it takes years for infected trees to show symptoms); it took off like wildfire. The industry basically gave up fighting it and just sells the crappy oranges from infected trees; almost all mature orange trees in Florida are infected.
Until a cure is found, your oranges are going to continue to be crappy :(
Re: How about fruit (Score:3)
So that's the reason the mandarin oranges have half green skin. I thought they just picked them early.
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Even when they don't, they get spray painted an unnatural bright orange (at least in the US). Citrus Red 2 can hide a lot of green color.
Re: How about fruit (Score:5, Interesting)
They do pick them early (not just oranges, pretty much most fruit and vegetables).
Funny story - way back, trains used to use interior gas lights (coal gas I think). Produce sellers were used to picking their products unripe, loading it into trains, and having it arrive at the destination perfectly ripe. Well, when trains switched to electric lights, suddenly all this unripe produce started arriving at the markets! They eventually figured out that ethylene gas, leaking from gas pipes, was serving to accelerate the ripening of the produce.
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So that's the reason the mandarin oranges have half green skin. I thought they just picked them early.
This may come as a surprise, but oranges are not orange. They're green. They will turn orange if exposed to excessive heat. Since we've grown used to that in the U.S., oranges are usually treated to make them orange, in the same way that cheddar cheese is dyed to make it orange, in the same way that President Trump is dyed to distract you from his own disturbingly unhealthy color.
Re: How about fruit (Score:3)
They turn orange when the chlorophyll breaks down.
That's fine but how about we spend less money (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not just how much money we give the billionaires they actively hold us back. We have had the ability to make limitless energy from wind and solar for a good 15 years now and we're not doing it because the billionaires said no. We used to have cheap houses because we built new cities but we can't do that because the billionaires said no. We had shorter commutes from work from home and of course wor
Re:How about fruit (Score:4, Insightful)
I read an article (in the Atlantic, I think) a few months ago that talked about the Florida citrus industry. IIRC it sounds like, in addition to the huge problems caused by that disease, the Florida growers have also made a habit of shooting themselves in the foot with stupid short-sighted choices.
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There are some really pricey grapes, like $8 a pound and crap, that are usually pretty good. Occasionally they go on sale and I've picked them up but when they do you can't buy very many because if they're on sale it's because they are going to go bad today or two.
Stone fruits are usually pretty safe too but it's a pain in the ass ripening them up. Still they don't taste like wood.
I gave up on waterme
Re: How about fruit (Score:2)
In my area Walmart and Kroger have the best fruit except for Kroger grapes. They taste good but have tiny seeds in them that get stuck in your teeth. The Walmart grapes don't have this problem and you can forget trying to buy any produce at Aldi, theirs is the worst.
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There are some products where it's not as big a deal - apples, for instance. A New Zealand apple can still taste great when it arrives in New York or London. But yeah, the market may insist we need to buy berries year-round, but like you I largely stick to seasonal produce as much as possible. And, if not, greenhouse grown products sourced from our region are typically better than the alternatives (like here in Washington state - we are fortunate to have British Columbia's greenhouse growers close by, selli
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I think the tomatoes are the worst (and they did get mentioned in some of the comments). They have actually bred them, including genetic manipulation, for nice even color on the outside, but the insides... You don't want to look inside today's tomatoes.
On the original banana topic, I would prefer to know when the bananas are too old. For that reason I respect the browning of bananas. Don't welcome it, but I prefer it to fake immortality.
Re: How about fruit (Score:2)
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Get locally produced stuff instead of imported ones from overseas. "Local" does not necessarily mean like from nearby farm, but whatever has minimal time spent in logistics.
Problem with shipping fruit from faraway places is that they are typically picked raw, and then they ripen during the months they spend in a shipping container and finally get an artificial ripening (e.g. with ethylene gas) at the end of journey. Of course they do not have nutrients or taste.
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Get locally produced stuff instead of imported ones from overseas. "Local" does not necessarily mean like from nearby farm, but whatever has minimal time spent in logistics.
Problem with shipping fruit from faraway places is that they are typically picked raw, and then they ripen during the months they spend in a shipping container and finally get an artificial ripening (e.g. with ethylene gas) at the end of journey. Of course they do not have nutrients or taste.
Not a problem. I'll get my kiwis from the guy down in the street near the Canadian border.
I get what you're saying, but in this age modern logistics allows us to get fruit from anywhere in the world at almost any time of the year. If we only bought local there would be vast empty spaces at the grocery store and our choices would be limited.
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I mean... [wikipedia.org] ;)
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If we only bought local there would be vast empty spaces at the grocery store and our choices would be limited.
They would just have a smaller produce section and rearrange it every few months. For some things, an increase in frozen fruit availability that was actually ripe is an improvement over bad fresh. Strawberries are particularly silly. There's only a couple of months a year that you can buy a container of strawberries that doesn't already have visible mold growing but they are still in the store year-round. That's also the only time they taste good. We could just not.
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I guess I'm a good bit older than you, but I remember growing up, even as a kid I knew what fruits/veggies were in what season of the year.
Sure, we might have not had 24/7/365 varieties , but the shelves were not anywhere close to being "empty".
We grew a lot move all over the US....we ate what was in season.....and nary a complaint was had as to "empty shelves"....
Re:How about fruit (Score:4, Informative)
They also have one of the most well-developed and efficient supply chains of any fresh food product, which is why they are one of the cheapest fruits available for purchase by weight even in temperate zones. Bananas shipped to the U.S., primarily from central and South America, typically spend only a couple of weeks in logistics. In fact, they arrive so quickly that nearly half that time is spent sitting in a ripening facility.
They also must be shipped unripe given the delicate ess of the ripened fruit. Fully ripe bananas essentially can't be shipped at all.
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I guess that's why this research is in the UK. Europe gets fresh bananas a couple days slower than everyone else.
It's the supply chain (Score:2)
Slave labor in the developing world helps keep prices down as well.
Lots of fruits are harvested in tropical environments by the local workforce, but the pricing of bananas is much lower than for other fruits.
It's the supply chain that makes the difference.
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Get locally produced stuff instead of imported ones from overseas. "Local" does not necessarily mean like from nearby farm, but whatever has minimal time spent in logistics.
Why? Getting food that is grown closer to where you live is not inherently more environmentally sustainable. (This is because only a small portion of the carbon emissions for the production of a product is related to its transportation. My jackass local farmers who spray their crops with endless amounts of herbicides and pesticides and tons of ammonia and drive their honking diesel tractors and trucks around all day are way worse than produce grown using truly sustainable farming practices that require a ri
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plants mostly grow straight out of the air by breaking carbon dioxide down for its carbon and releasing oxygen as a byproduct.
So you are a fertilizer-denier? You don't seem to see the value that soil plays. Here's a hint: nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium uptake happens in the roots.
Re: How about fruit (Score:2)
The major grocer chains tend to stock fruit that was picked too early. Often fruit is harvested before the season is in full swing and heavily advertised, but it is usually not fully ripe and thus a waste of your money.
Sadly, most people don't know how to buy fruit. And most stores would rather move poor quality inventory as cheaply as possible than stock fruit that might be overripe in a few days.
Even with the corners they cut, the typical store's produce tends to be more expensive than a restaurant wholes
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I mean I think it's kind of hard to fuck up a banana but if anyone can do it it's large grocery store chains...
I've got bad news for you: all the banana you ever ate are fucked up. "Real" bananas with actual banana flavor called "Gros Michel" are practically extinct since the 1950, when they were wiped out by the banana blight [wikipedia.org]. Nowadays, all you get is literal clones of the tasteless Cavendish.
Re:How about fruit (Score:5, Interesting)
I've got bad news for you: despite what you read online, Gros Michel tastes almost exactly the same as Cavendish. Maybe slightly better, but not very different. Which is why Cavendish was chosen from the ~1000+ banana cultivars out there to replace it. If you want new tastes, Gros Michel is not the banana you should be looking for.
Re: How about fruit (Score:2)
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Tell me you've never eaten a Gros Michel without telling me you've never eaten a Gros Michel.
Re: How about fruit (Score:2)
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How old ARE you? *boggle*. Or did you vacation in exotic locales or order fruit from rare fruit sellers as a child?
Gros Michel was pretty much entirely off US supermarket shelves by 1965. Are you like 70 years old or something?
Re: How about fruit (Score:2)
Re:How about fruit (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to me. The Cavendish wasn't widely planted in Indonesia until the early 90's. As a child in the 80's I had access to the Gros Michel banana (pisang Ambon) and I didn't like it . In the tropics the ripening process takes place over a very short time. My recollection is that the Gros Micnel was less stable than the Cavendish, and when it turned it was unpleasant.
I think that a persons appreciation for Gros Michel is going to hinge on whether they are repelled by strongly sweet flavors. If you like bananas with a touch of brown on the skin you're going to be more appreciative of sweeter varieties.
I had similar reactions to pineapple. To me an overripe pineapple is repulsive, and the risk of encountering that spoiled flavor made it a fruit to be avoided.
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You realize that's just another mass-produced variety. There are others that taste better that are just too hard to grow in such large numbers.
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Fertilizer means that there are. You're confusing reductions in soil carbon with reductions in nutrient availability.
Reduction in soil carbon isn't good, but it's not a nutrient. It does a number of things - reduces water retention (so you have to irrigate during drought), can potentially reduce aeration (depends), leads to less soil biodiversity (can be good or bad, but in general usually more bad than good), and less nutrient *retention* - but
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As for how to fix it, well, you have to align incentives. One, you have to get rid of the cold chain where possible, because again, refrigeration of most produce is a quality killer. And two, you need to get consumers definitive quality metrics on the label - otherwise they're just going to pick what's cheapest. I'm not saying give them e.g. raw brix, TA, TPI, etc figures and tell them to figure it out for themselves, but one can readily create one or more composite scores that scientifically quantify the q
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I think the main reason store tomatoes is bad is refrigeration. A cut ripe tomato that tastes perfect won't taste nearly as good the next day after refrigerating. And I don't think it's the time passing.
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While you're technically right about the banana not being a tree, it's commonly called a "banana tree". This is an English vs. technicalese distinction. Just like a walnut isn't a nut, but rather a drupe...in technicalese.
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If you buy a standard container of mixed nuts, the few hazelnuts (filberts) are the only nuts in the container.
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if the tomatoes are picked after they've started blushing, then ripened, consumers can't tell the difference in taste
This is a good rule of thumb for growing at home too. Because a lot of bugs only eat the ripening fruit.
Re: How about fruit (Score:2)
"Plants do not need soil carbon."
Some do use some carbon from soil. Corn uses more than most.
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I'm trying to figure out what you're talking about. Are you maybe talking about PEPC binding of bicarbonate and dissolved CO2? That's a replenishing / balancing pathway for the citric acid cycle to make up for the plant robbing from it when it sequesters nitrogen (and to restore pH). It contributes at best 1-2% of the plant's carbon, and that's only if nitrogen uptake is very heavy. And bicarbonate and CO2 (they form an equilibrium) are not "soil carbon"; they're not part of the soil, they're just gas diss
Re: How about fruit (Score:2)
Ask your beloved AI if you can't Google it
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With apples, IIUC, you need to worry about the coddling moth. https://pnwhandbooks.org/insec... [pnwhandbooks.org]
Where I used to live it was illegal to grow apples without spraying them with vile insecticides because of that.
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Stop buying your fruit from mega-chains. They ship it unripe, and then use "ripening rooms" locally. Nutrient uptake isn't even a thing when they're sitting on racks in ethylene-enriched air.
We get fruit from local farms by way of a farmers market, and there is a night / day difference.
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I don't think it has to do with the soil. Fruit is hybridized to (a) be easy to harvest, (b) be easy to transport, (c) to look good, and (d) have a long shelf life. Flavor and nutrition are not among the goals.
Re: How about fruit (Score:2)
Re: How about fruit (Score:2)
Ah ze de Fons!
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Once again, for the 20 millionth time this thread: reread the article. This isn't about ripening. This is about the flesh browning when exposed to air after peeling.
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People who write this almost exclusively have never eaten a Gros Michel.
Regardless of what people write online, it tastes almost identical to a Cavendish. That's why Cavendish was chosen to replace it. It's maybe a bit better, but it's not a radically different cultivar. There are radically different cultivars, and we should be adopting them more!
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I'm VERY old and I remember the taste, also there are some place where they still grow.
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Man, you must be... at least mid-70s? Even my parents are too young, and I feel old ;)
Anyway, congrats on living this long, and I hope you have many more good years ahead of you :)
(And yes there are, you can order them from rare fruit growers, if you're willing to shell out for it [miamifruit.org] ;) )
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Nutritional content is, realistically, better. PPO is pretty much an antinutrient (in addition to degrading polyphenols, it also degrades vitamin C and protein digestability).
Re:And the nutritional content is the same? (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, if you want nutritious bananas, you don't want the mainstream A*/B* lineages at all, you want the fe'i (Pacific) lineages. They have so much beta carotene that not only is their flesh golden [pinimg.com], but they'll turn your urine fluorescent as well ;) Most are cooking bananas, but there are some 'Karat' varities that are good out-of-hand if you let them ripen long enough.
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Fe'i bananas are neat, they're not even from the same two crossed species as the other ~99% of bananas on Earth, or even in the same Musa subgroup. They grow upright [alchetron.com] instead of hanging down. They ripen orange [gstatic.com], mottled/striped [fbcdn.net], or brick red [ytimg.com], and are, as noticed, yellow inside, with like 100x the beta carotene of a Cavendish. The sap is purple [promusa.org] and can be used as a dye. Different number of chromosomes (not just ploidy). Etc. Very different!
Just another case of the Polynesians doing their own thing ;) They o
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And the nutritional content is the same? The summary mentions one gene was edited, but aren't single genes sometimes (usually ?) involved in multiple things? So how carefully have they gone looking for the "unintended consequences"?
Looks like a job for the consumer. Not sure how it works in the UK... around here FDA pulls the "substantially equivalent" rabbit out of its hat and lets it go bananas.