Last year, the startup Pairwise began selling the first food product made with Crispr technology in the U.S.: a new type of flavor-tuned mustard greens. But most consumers never had a chance to try it. The company introduced the greens to the foodservice industry in just a few cities, including select restaurants, cafeterias, hotels, nursing homes, and caterers. One grocery store in New York City also carried the greens.
Currently, biotech giant Bayer Obtained green license from Pairwise The plan is to distribute it to grocery stores nationwide. “We hope to see this product in kitchens and on dining tables this fall,” said Anne Williams, head of protected crops for Bayer’s vegetable seeds division. She said Bayer is currently talking to farmers and salad companies about the best way to grow and package the vegetables.
Pairwise wanted to make salads more appetizing and nutritious, so they turned to mustard, a nutritious plant similar to kale. But because it’s hot and bitter, it’s not often eaten raw. Instead, it’s often cooked to make it more palatable. Pairwise aimed to tone down the flavor while preserving all of the fiber, antioxidants, and other nutrients in mustard. The company used CRISPR to delete some copies of the gene responsible for the spiciness. “We think people are going to love the taste,” Williams says.
Pairwise previously taste-tested vegetables at farmers markets, explaining that they were genetically edited. Tasters generally responded favorably to the vegetables, Pairwise CEO Tom Adams said. The company is currently focused on developing seedless cherries and seedless blackberries. “We see our role in the food chain as new product development,” Adams said.
The first CRISPR-edited foods available to consumers debuted in Japan in 2021 by Tokyo-based startup SanaTechSeed. Started selling tomatoes It contains high concentrations of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a chemical produced in the brain and found naturally in some foods, which the company claims can lower blood pressure and promote relaxation.
in Event in the Netherlands on May 28thSanatec President Shinpei Takeshita said the company is expanding sales in Japan and has completed all regulatory paperwork to sell the tomato in the Philippines. It is also considering bringing the tomato to the United States.
Mustard greens and high-GABA tomatoes aren’t technically genetically modified organisms, or GMOs—at least, not in the traditional sense. Typically, GMOs are crops that have genetic material from an entirely different species added to them. In contrast, gene editing involves changing an organism’s own DNA.
Williams explains that CRISPR is a tool to accelerate the breeding of new plants, allowing scientists to replicate changes that could occur in nature much faster. The USDA has determined that gene-edited crops do not need to undergo lengthy regulatory review because they do not contain foreign DNA and could have been developed using traditional breeding methods – selecting parent plants with specific traits to produce offspring with those traits.