CRISPR to Help You Eat Your Greens

CRISPR technology is here to stay—and it’s making a splash in produce.

Pairwise is a food and ag company specializing in gene editing and CRISPR technology to “transform plants and the production system.” It recently teamed up with Bayer to license a leafy-greens blend edited with CRISPR to enhance flavor. 

Based in North Carolina, the company launched its first product in the U.S. under the Conscious Greens brand. 

Eat your greens: Pairwise’s first goal was to remove the “wasabi” bitterness from mustard greens. 

Soundbite: “We introduced the first CRISPR food in North America, and the product was a success among consumers and chefs. Now that we’ve achieved several important milestones and laid the commercial groundwork, this new licensing agreement with Bayer is the next phase in commercialization.” — Tom Adams, CEO of Pairwise

The greens are coming to a store near you in late summer/fall of this year.

ICYMI, consumers aren’t always the biggest fans of GMOs. But gene-edited foods are different. 

Soundbite: “GMOs do not equal gene editing, and many gene edits are very small mutations that could have occurred naturally. Many people refer to these types of small gene edits as non-GMO or non-transgenic. It would be helpful if going forward, we try not to conflate the two. GMOs bring in transgenes from other species while gene-edited plants generally do not.” — Melinda Kliegman, PhD, director of public impact at the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI)

Stay tuned: The leafy greens are only the beginning for Pairwise. The company has developed a seedless, thornless blackberry through CRISPR and has plans for more crops in the near future.