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Biotech

Gene-Edited Non-Browning Banana Could Cut Food Waste, Scientists Say (theguardian.com) 65

Posted by BeauHD from the gone-bananas dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Many of us have been guilty of binning a mushy, overripe banana -- but now scientists say they have a solution with the launch of a genetically engineered non-browning banana. The product is the latest in a series of gene-edited fruits and vegetables designed to have a longer shelf life. Scientists say the technology is emerging as a powerful new weapon against food waste, which occurs globally on an epic scale. The banana, developed by Tropic, a biotech company based in Norwich, is said to remain fresh and yellow for 12 hours after being peeled and is less susceptible to turning brown when bumped during harvesting and transportation.

The company has also developed a slow-ripening banana that has been approved in several countries, which it plans to launch later in the year. Other research teams are working on lettuce that wilts more slowly, bruise-resistant apples and potatoes and identifying the genes that determine how quickly grapes and blueberries shrivel. [...] The company worked out how to disable a gene responsible for the production of an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase, which causes browning. The same gene is silenced in Arctic apples, a genetically modified variety, which has been sold in the US since 2017, and blocking the production of polyphenol oxidase has been shown to work in tomatoes, melon, kiwifruits and mushrooms. In the bananas, Tropic made precise changes to existing genes without introducing foreign genetic material. The report notes that an estimated 33% of the produce that is harvested worldwide is never consumed due to the short shelf-life of many fruit and vegetable products. Bananas are among the most thrown-away foods, with some 5 billion bananas tossed in the U.S. each year.

Gene-Edited Non-Browning Banana Could Cut Food Waste, Scientists Say More | Reply

Gene-Edited Non-Browning Banana Could Cut Food Waste, Scientists Say

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  • Great, but how does it taste? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tomkost ( 944194 ) on Friday March 07, 2025 @11:39PM (#65219231)
    If it tastes like the very mild flavor of gas ripened tomatoes then I have no interest. Heck, I don't even mind eating a banana that's still a big green. I'm bit suspicious at minimum. I notice the article doesn't say anything about the taste..

    • My thought was that a better use of this technology would be to edit resistance to Panama Disease into the Gros Michel instead of making the Cavendish hang around longer.

      Then we could all enjoy the more flavorful banana.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      I have some good news and bad news. First the bad news: it takes like piece of wood and you won't want to eat it. The good news: there's no rush because it will last years in your refrigerator --- it's a BIFL banana!

  • Noooo they must brown for Banana Bread! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Otaku-GenX ( 3414253 ) on Friday March 07, 2025 @11:39PM (#65219233)
    You must have brown ones for the best Banana Bread!!!!!
    • Mod parent up! Also, banana ripeness is a matter of taste. I usually buy them from the discounted basket if I plan to eat them within the next couple of days. I find the other ones too green.

    • Re:Noooo they must brown for Banana Bread! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday March 08, 2025 @03:16AM (#65219399)

      The problem is, most people don't bake anymore. They hardly know how to cook at all.

      • True. Most Americans are fat too. Coincidence, I think not. While you can certainly bake, cook, or otherwise prepare unhealthy foods. It is way easier to eat healthy when you control the ingredients that go into the food you eat. And the saw of “I am too busy, I just don’t have the time.” Is demonstrably false when you factor in how much time the average person spend sitting on their keister with their face glued to a screen. A person may find that more enjoyable activity, but it is also c
    • Mushy bananas are good for all kinds of things beyond banana bread. I use the ones that are getting a bit brown to go along with cereal or if they're getting even more mushy for putting in oatmeal. They're also great for throwing into a blender to make a peanut butter and banana smoothie. I think they taste even better for those purposes once they've gone a bit brown.

  • I do like a good banana but the variability is annoying. Can't be too mad as access to bananas is one of those perks of modern globalism but extending the window of opportunity to not have a mushy oversweet mess is more then welcome by me, keep editing those genes.

    GMO is pretty rad stuff, I hope developments like this get it's PR improved.

    Anyway, more tomato? [youtube.com]

    • I do like a good banana but the variability is annoying. Can't be too mad as access to bananas is one of those perks of modern globalism but extending the window of opportunity to not have a mushy oversweet mess is more then welcome by me, keep editing those genes.

      GMO is pretty rad stuff, I hope developments like this get it's PR improved.

      Anyway, more tomato? [youtube.com]

      Check out my recipe for banana bread in the posts here. Freeze the older ones and make bread when it's convenient.

  • Don't tell Trump about this, because the last time he heard about transgenic research, some mice had to be disposed of rather than used to research human related diseases.

    • Re:just don't tell Trump (Score:5, Funny)

      by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Saturday March 08, 2025 @01:40AM (#65219337)

      ...heard about transgenic research ...

      Someone should tell him about trans-altantic flights: I don't want those sort of passengers making US airports, gay.

    • On the plus side, trans fats might be finally banned for good.
    • Proving once again, any /. story comments can be hijacked to shit on Drumf and/or Leon.
    • "We will not subsidize Guatemalan transgender bananas!"
  • In my experience, shrivelled blueberries are not only still good they have more flavor the the plump ones. Bad blueberries have mold and shrivelled blueberries are less likely to mold than plump ones. Solve the mold problem and I think you will have a winner. I'm not sure solving the shrivelling but not the mold problem will be all that helpful.

  • in my wifes country they just put ripe bananas in the fridge and they're fine to eat up to two weeks even if the skin turns black. somehow in usa we think going black from cold is a bad think, but it's BS. Just ripen first because what you refrigerate is what you'll get

    • Frozen bananas are pretty popular though . . .

    • in my wifes country they just put ripe bananas in the fridge and they're fine to eat up to two weeks even if the skin turns black. somehow in usa we think going black from cold is a bad think, but it's BS. Just ripen first because what you refrigerate is what you'll get

      In the US you can get over-ripe bananas too. Wife picks them up for around 25 cents a pound, puts them in the freezer, and they make kick-ass banana bread. And it the ones we get for eating out of hand go too ripe, they goin in the freezer as well.

      Somewhere in here I posted her banana bread recipe. You should try it.

      • That is one of the things some people do not like :P
        I do not even eat sticky rice with banana and coconut in banana leaves.

        I can not get why one is eating something that is by nature already so super sweet.

  • This is alright, and even anti-gmo's should agree. It's just cutting off the bad part.

    • even anti-gmo's should agree

      Oh, never underestimate the ability of an anti-gmo to chant nonsense at the drop of any hat anywhere. The over-privileged "organic" crowd are happy to use their western buying power to reduce food output anywhere in the name of everything from simple fear, to religious "don't tamper with God's works", to a claimed better tasting soup.

  • Wouldn't it be super if people ate what they bought, and didn't leave it sitting there pining for the fjords.

  • I've always wanted... (Score:3)

    by Arzaboa ( 2804779 ) on Saturday March 08, 2025 @01:13AM (#65219329)

    This is great news! I've always wanted a banana that I could peel and leave on the counter for 12 hours, before eating.

    --
    You have to dream before your dreams can come true. - A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

    • Spotted the person who read past the headline: "The banana ... is said to remain fresh and yellow for 12 hours after being peeled and is less susceptible to turning brown when bumped during harvesting and transportation."

      Who even cares about the peel after it's been removed?

    • You must know my wife. Her "peel to consumption" time averages four to six hours.

  • If it's overripe, it's trash. I'm not guilty of it, I did the thing you do. Sheesh.

  • Gros Michel (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Saturday March 08, 2025 @02:12AM (#65219355)

    Are they going to bring back the Gros Michel banana next? Surely they could make a variant that can resist Panama disease.

    • I did a quick web search and found this: https://miamifruit.org/product... [miamifruit.org]{sourceid}&g_merchantid=&g_placement=&g_partition=&g_campaignid=17435653585&g_ifproduct=&tw_source=google&tw_adid=&tw_campaign=17435653585&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA8q--BhDiARIsAP9tKI0IcNK4b44i9SKGq6c7QvxaExNUqQaLK6kdKXFyX-JYPH0X1miF0wEaAmL2EALw_wcB

      • The cultivar still exists, just not in significant quantities outside of specialized growing conditions. It's largely been replaced by the Cavendish banana, though Cavendish bananas are also having problems from Panama disease TR4:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        If Gros Michel bananas make a comeback, you'll see them on grocery store shelves again at "normal" prices, e.g. not $17 for a bunch from a specialty seller.

  • It's all a matter of definition. Specifically, a definition designed to push an agenda.

    Example: If you give food to your animals, that is classified as "food waste" (at least, where I live). What, animals live off of air and sunshine? If you peel a carrot, that is food waste. Core an apple? Food waste.

    So: what agendas are being driven, and why?

    • In Australia, not much is wasted, Orange peel fed to cattle or sheep. Bruised cherries - sheep. Hay bales are quite expensive. The only failure was NZ frozen vegetables, that were really Chinese produce, causing illegal pesticide results at the abattoir. All stale bread: sheep. Unlike the UK and madcow, feeding cattle or pigs with offal is forbidden.
      • Forgot to say, In Vietnam, pigs and cattle get drunk, on the fermented skins and sludge of rice wine.

    • Simply feeding animals does not make it food waste. Feeding crops intended for humans to animals because people have let them spoil, or are too picky about appearances is food waste i.e; waste of human food. In some contexts words and phrases don't always mean the simplistic face-value interpretation, because they are shortened forms of more unwieldy alternatives. Nor is everything black-or-white, food-or-waste. The EPA published a reduce-reuse-recycle-style ranking for food end-use over a year ago: https:/ [epa.gov]

  • I don't regard them as ripe until they're brown (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ResistanceIsIrritati ( 808817 ) on Saturday March 08, 2025 @04:53AM (#65219481) Homepage
    Brown and soft to me means bananas are ripe rather than overripe. I won't eat them until they develop the full flavour that goes with the colour. Overripe is when they're runny.

  • I myself enjoy a ripe, sweet banana. And when they start to overripe, I slice and put them in the freezer, so I can make some nice smoothies.

    Now, for the problems I see:

    1) Just like with most crops, this new banana can dominate the market, pushing other variaeties away and exterminating genetic variation. Actually, this is something that bananas already suffer as of today.

    2) Royalties! Today, anyone can grow a banana tree for yourself. Where I live, lots of people do. Having a dominant, genetically engineer

    • #2 See Bacigalupi's "calorie man." A dystopian vision of the end-result of business logic.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by elakazal ( 79531 )

      1) This really is a non-issue for banana, which commercially is essentially all one cultivar, Dwarf Cavendish (there are other bananas at small scale in tropical countries, but a non-browning Dwarf Cavendish wouldn't fill the niches they fill now any better than browning Dwarf Cavendish does).

      2) You can still plant the original Dwarf Cavendish if you don't want to pay royalties. And the protection doesn't last forever. Plus, honestly, one of the reasons more of this work isn't done in tropical crops is that

  • A caution about food waste statistics (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Saturday March 08, 2025 @09:01AM (#65219627) Homepage
    You'll often hear statistics about the enormous amount of food waste, but you should be cautious when you hear this. Food production varies significantly from year to year across different regions and around the globe. Therefore it's absolutely necessary to over-produce by a significant margin every year just to make sure that variations in production due to weather, climate, bird flu, etc., don't cause us to dip into food shortage range. I would much rather live in a country that throws away a third of the food it grows every year than live in a country that barely had enough to feed everyone this year. And most food waste is organic. Plastic packaging is the biggest problem, not the food itself.

    • Absolutely no problem with throwing a third of food away because some years certain food might not be available, even though every year many people don't receive adequate nutrition?

  • Throwing over ripe bananas away? That's a fscking crime against gastronomy!

    At risk of turning Slashdot into a cookbook for nerds - Never throw away overripe bananas. Pop 'em into the freezer and save them for bananna bread. Here's how ya do it:

    2 cups or 250 grams flour

    1.5 teaspoon or 6 ml baking soda

    "pinch" of salt

    1 cup or 194 grams brown sugar

    1/2 cup or. 114 ml Vegetable oil

    2 eggs large

    5 ml vanilla

    4 ripe bananas

    1 cup or 117 grams chopped walnuts- chopped to your liking

    4 overripe bananas

    P

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Maybe.

      There are many parallel processes involved with a banana going from under-ripe to too-ripe, and browning is just one of them. In a way it's convenient; when a banana has developed brown spots but isn't completely brown, it's just right to eat. When it goes mostly brown or even completely brown, it's still safe to eat but it's unpleasantly mushy and a little insipid.

      The enzyme they've knocked out converts polyphenols into precursors of melanin, which is the actual brown pigment in a ripening banana.

  • All it would take is prions in one GM food that most people eat--to cause the ticking-bomb mental illness of billions of people. Most of he foods we eat have been tested for millions of years. Some like tomatoes and corn were still eaten by Native Americans and Mexicans for hundreds of years before Europeans brought them back.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by elakazal ( 79531 )

      These are a loss-of-function gene edit, not transgenic. They aren't expressing any foreign genes or producing any foreign proteins. They are just not making a protein they used to make—polyphenol oxidase. It may be making a truncated version of polyphenol oxidase (they don't seem to have made public yet where they edited the gene) but the odds are that nonsense mediated decay is breaking down the RNA transcript before much of the truncated protein is made.

  • What's the need?

    We already have lettuces that out last prime ministers :-)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • A new tenet of the Greenotic faith. Free the bananas! No matter the cost, we are with the Bananas! Semper Fi!

  • When you think about it, whatever you wrap your food in--will probably cause more environmental damage than rotting food. Fortunately, bananas are/were organically self-wrapped.
  • If they would fix the humans these problems would not exist. Brown bananas are delicious on bread, yoghurt, everything that needs a little sweetness.

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