Slice a banana into a lunchbox at 8 a.m., and by lunchtime it has turned brown and soft. A Norwich company says it has made a non-browning banana, one that stays firm and yellow after peeling and slicing. After reviewing a marketing notice from the company, Defra, the government department for farming in England, has now agreed it is "precision bred," so it falls outside the strict rules for genetically modified food.
Tropic Biosciences calls the banana the first new commercial variety in more than 75 years, with the same taste and texture as the standard Cavendish most of us buy. To make it, the company changed as little as a single letter of DNA in each of three copies of a gene linked to browning. Tests described in the notice found no foreign DNA from the editing process left in the plant. It is not yet cleared for sale in England, where the Food Standards Agency must still approve it as food.
Tropic has the go-ahead in Japan and Brazil, which chief executive Gilad Gershon called "a major step forward in bringing innovative, waste‑reducing produce to consumers worldwide," in a press release.
Read More: Plants Are Constantly Communicating, and Biodiversity Shapes the Message
Explore All OptionsHow the Non-Browning Banana Was Edited
Peeling, bruising, or slicing a banana breaks open its cells, letting enzymes meet chemicals they are normally kept away from, and the oxygen in the air, and the reaction makes brown pigment.
Tropic went after the gene for one of those enzymes, called PPO1, using CRISPR/Cas9, a tool that works like scissors, cutting DNA at a chosen spot and leaving the cell to patch the break. The repair left a one-letter insertion or deletion in each copy of the gene, and a seven-letter deletion in one. The notice says that should stop the banana from making a working PPO1 enzyme.
The editing kit was delivered into banana cells only temporarily, so it would not become part of the plant's DNA. Tropic tested leaves from the first edited plant for leftover DNA from the kit, then sequenced leaves from cloned plants. Neither test found any of it in the plant. The government's scientific advisers, known as ACRE, say Tropic also analyzed its guide RNAs against a banana genome sequence to look for unintended edits.
Bananas like the Cavendish are grown from shoots and tissue culture rather than seed, so every new plant is a copy of the last, and the notice reports that the edits held steady across several generations.
What England Has and Has Not Decided
Under the rules, which apply only in England, a company files a marketing notice with Defra, ACRE reviews it, and the Secretary of State decides whether the plant counts as precision bred. That is the legal term for a gene-edited plant whose changes could have happened naturally or through ordinary breeding, with no DNA added from another species. ACRE's advice shows it pressed Tropic for more detail on unintended edits and was satisfied.
Defra's ruling does not allow sales by itself, because the Food Standards Agency has its own approval to give and only considers applications that include Defra's confirmation.
Why Browning Is Only the Start for Tropic
Tropic says browning accounts for about 20 percent of banana yield losses. The pitch to shoppers is fruit for salads, smoothies, and desserts that browns less.
The company has also launched a banana that stays green 12 days longer, a change Tropic credits with lifting yields, opening new export routes, and cutting transport waste by up to 50 percent.
Next, it plans a variety resistant to Panama disease. According to Tropic, the disease has reached more than 20 countries and is an existential threat to the $25 billion banana industry, putting food security and farmers' livelihoods at risk.
For Tropic, a banana that stays yellow in the lunchbox is only one part of a bigger plan to change how bananas are grown and shipped.
Read More: Chemicals that Come into Contact with Food — Not Just Ingredients — May Harm Our Health
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information Tropic: Tropic’s Non‑Browning Banana Approved in Japan and Brazil
- This article references information Tropic: Tropic’s Non Browning Banana Named One of TIME’s Best Inventions 2025
- This article references information from GOV.UK: Precision bred organism marketing notice (reference: PBM/26/MUAC/001)
- This article references information from Defra: CONFIRMATION OF PRECISION BRED STATUS REFERENCE PBM/26/MUAC/001
- This article references information from ACRE: Advice on the precision bred status of organisms described within a precision breeding marketing notice
- This article references information from GOV.UK: Precision bred organisms: application guidance
