UK company creates bananas that don’t turn brown

Bananas turning brown is a natural process that occurs over time as the fruit overripens and produces too much ethylene. The turning of yellow pigments to brown is called enzymatic browning and is aided by high amounts of ethylene.

While there have been no known health issues arising from eating bananas that have turned brown, they taste too sweet and turn moldy and start to smell unpleasant soon enough.

Tropic, an agricultural-biotechnology company from the United Kingdom (UK), claims to have solved this issue. They have created a variety of bananas using gene editing technology to develop disease-resistant bananas that don’t turn brown and can also solve the Panama disease problem, Interesting Engineering reported.

Panama disease, also called Panama disease Tropical Race 4 (TR4), is a serious banana disease and is one of the most severe threats facing the banana industry in the world today.

There had been no known cure or varieties of bananas that were resistant to the disease until now.

Tropic’s “non-browning” bananas have also received the go-ahead from the Philippines Department of Agriculture, which has a rigorous gene editing regulatory determination process, said the company in a statement.

The statement further said that Tropic’s non-browning bananas could potentially reduce food waste and CO2 emissions by over 25 percent, given that over 60 percent of the exported bananas become diseased or go to waste before reaching the consumer. The gene-edited bananas could support reducing greenhouse emissions equivalent to removing 2 million passenger vehicles from the road each year.

The company hopes their non-browning bananas can soon be freely imported into the Philippines, one of Southeast Asia’s top producers and exporters. The country saw its global market share in the banana industry drop significantly due to the Panama TR4.

Panama TR4 is a big problem in countries like Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, Mozambique, Pakistan, and India, among others. It is estimated that over 80 percent of the global production of bananas has come under the threat of Panama TR4, caused by a fungus called Fusarium oxysporum that lives in the soil. The fungus cannot be eradicable and has the potential to survive in the soil for decades.

Symptoms of Panama TR4 in banana plants include leaf yellowing and wilting. As the disease progresses, the symptoms become harsher. The leaf margins and the base of the older leaves will start turning brown.