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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Pairwise

CRISPR Specialist Pairwise Renews Partnership With Bayer to Focus on Gene-Edited Corn

Today, Pairwise announced a new five-year partnership with ag giant Bayer after touting milestones resulting from the two companies’ initial collaboration.

According to the gene-editing specialist, the initial partnership – which concluded in June of this year – had seen Pairwise help develop 27 novel traits that were transferred into Bayer’s testing programs. These included developing corn phenotypes with a 20 percent increase in kernel row numbers per ear and gene-edited soy that is more resistant to Asian soybean rust. According to Pairwise, both advances could increase yield and reduce the need for chemical inputs, such as fungicides.

The renewal of the partnership by Bayer is not only a ringing endorsement for Pairwise, but it also signifies the recognition by big ag companies of the need to leverage new tools like gene editing in the face of climate change.

The new companies’ collaboration will focus on optimizing and enhancing gene-edited short-stature corn for use in Bayer’s Preceon Smart Corn system. Short-stature has a targeted height of 30 to 40 percent less than traditional corn, which, according to Bayer, gives additional protection from crop loss due to the changes brought on by climate change, such as warming and extreme winds. Short-stature corn also enables more precise application of inputs during the growing system, resulting in reduced risk of crop loss.

“The shorter stature allows growers to optimize their operations and minimize risk, an ever-increasing concern in the face of climate-related events,” said Pairwise CEO Tom Adams.

In the announcement, Pairwise talks up the newly branded platform they are calling Fulcrum, in which the company essentially gives a brand name to the different gene-editing IP. According to Pairwise, the tools included in the Fulcrum platform include REDRAW, which the company describes as a precise templated editing toolbox that can make any type of small edit at CRISPR-targeted sites, and SHARC, a proprietary enzyme that “works well for cutting, base editing, and REDRAW editing, a combination that’s created a foundational, game-changing genome editing toolkit.”

Pairwise Rolls Out First CRISPR-Edited Produce to U.S. Restaurants

Pairwise, a startup specializing in developing gene-edited produce, today announced the launch of its first product, a CRISPR-developed mustard green. The new product, the Conscious Greens Purple Power Baby Greens Blend, will launch into the restaurant/food service channel in partnership with the food service specialist Performance Food Group.

The launch of gene-edited produce by Pairwise comes almost three years after the company got the sign-off from the USDA for its gene-edited mustard green. Mustard greens aren’t usually found on menus due to their pungent smell and bitter taste, but with changes engineered by CRISPR, Pairwise hopes to create a nutritious alternative to kale and Brussels sprouts that also tastes good.

While the Conscious Foods blend with Pairwise’s mustard greens will be the first publicly announced CRISPR-edited produce available in the US market, the product follows the launch of gene-edited tomatoes in Japan in late 2021. That product was produced by Sanatech Seed, which used CRISPR to increase the amount of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the tomatoes, a supplement that researchers claim can reduce blood pressure and improve moods.

The release of the Sanatech Seed tomatoes came roughly the same time gene-edited fish became commercially available in Japan. In late 2021, Kyoto-based Regional Fish Co., Ltd. started selling genome-edited “Madai” red sea bream and “22-seiki fugu” tiger puffer fish which were edited to grow bigger.

In the US, large ag conglomerates like Simplot have been working with CRISPR since 2018, developing the technology to reduce bruising and black spots in potatoes or extend the life of the strawberry. However, as of this point, Simplot and other firms working with the technology haven’t announced the public availability of their products.

Pairwise, which showcased its CRISPR-edited produce for one of the first times earlier this year at The Spoon’s CES food tech happy hour, plans to roll out its Conscious Foods product into grocery stores later in 2023

CES Session: The Future of Farming (Video & Transcript)

The first session we will feature is titled ‘The Future of Farming’, a panel which featured experts on gene-edited crops, molecular farming, and vertical farming.

The session description:

The numerous challenges facing today’s farmers require them to be ever-more-efficient to survive. In this session, we’ll look at how farmers are employing automation, IoT, biotech and more to create the farms of the future.

The panelists for this session included:

  • Vonnie Estes, VP of Innovation, International Fresh Produce Association (Moderator)

  • Haven Baker, Co-Founder, Chief Business Officer at Pairwise

  • Amit Dhingra, CSO | Professor and Department Head, Moolec Science | Texas A&M University

  • Katie Seawell, Chief Commercial Officer, Bowery Farming

This content is available to Spoon Plus subscribers. If you would like to subscribe to Spoon Plus, you can do so here.

Pairwise Launches ‘Conscious Foods’ Brand to Bring Gene-Edited Leafy Greens to Market

Pairwise, a startup that specializes in developing gene-edited produce, has announced the launch of its consumer-facing brand called Conscious Foods.

The company’s first product sold under its new brand will be its gene-edited version of Brassica juncea, more commonly known as mustard greens. The company’s mustard green is a new take on a leafy green that has not been on many menus due to a pungent smell and bitter taste. With changes engineered by CRISPR, Pairwise hopes to create a nutritious alternative to kale and Brussels sprouts that also tastes good.

The company, which got approval from the USDA last August to move forward with commercializing its CRISPR-derived mustard green, plans to bring the first products to market in early 2023. The company plans to spend the bulk of the following year optimizing mixes, creating enough seed stock to provide to farmers, and also creating awareness for its new product throughout activation events.

Pairwise’s rollout of a new consumer-facing brand fits a now-familiar pattern in which a food tech platform company launches a new brand identity as it enters the commercialization stage. Over the past couple of years we’ve seen companies such as Perfect Day, MycoTechnologies, and others launch new brands that separate the final product identity a bit from the high-tech origins and try to sell the consumer on the benefits.

“Our idea is to create this brand that stands for who we are, which includes transparency,” Adams told me on a Zoom call. According to Adams, they will put information on the package that the food is produced by gene-editing and provide a way for interested consumers to get more information (such as a QR code on the package).

“We’re not going to hide from it, but we also really want to be selling the product based on the benefits rather than the technology. I know I buy products because of the benefits I get from them.”

The company has plans to release additional products beyond their first leafy greens and are currently working on developing pitless cherries and seedless blackberries. With the blackberries, the company is developing traits beyond just making them seedless that are helpful to the grower and picker.

“In the berry space, thorns present a real challenge to picking them,” Adams said. “So we’re removing them.”

Pairwise Raises $90M Series B for its CRISPR Food Tech

Pairwise, which uses CRISPR technology to enhance fruits and vegetables, announced today that it has raised a $90 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Pontifax Global Food and Agriculture Technology Fund (Pontifax AgTech) and existing investor Deerfield Management Company. Temasek and Leaps by Bayer also participated in the round, which brings Pairwise’s total funding to $115 million.

CRISPR is an exciting new field in food and ag tech. As Spoon Founder Mike Wolf wrote last year:

Food scientists around the world are using CRISPR tools to create food that is more disease resistant and tastes better, as well as utilizing the technology to save crops that might be at risk due to climate change.

Pairwise is using its CRISPR technology to improve five different types of produce, including mustard greens. Mustard greens are a high-yield crop with a strong nutritional profile, but their pungent smell and bitter taste prevents them from being a dinner plate staple. Pairwise aims to develop mustard green that gets rid off these not-so-great parts of the green so it too, can be an additional crop grown for consumption.

In addition to greens, Pairwise is working on improved berries and cherries. The applications of Pairwise’s technology go beyond eliminating bad odors and tastes. The company promises that CRISPR will allow it to also improve the shelf life, yield and seasonal availability of fruits and vegetables.

There are still regulatory hurdles to overcome for CRISPR-based foods. Unlike genetically modified foods, CRISPR is not introducing anything new into the genes of a plant (or meat). It is simply working with the material that is already present.

But still, it is uncharted territory. At the end of last year, the USDA sent out a proposed rule change that would have it oversee gene-edited animals instead of the FDA. So look for the regulations around CRISPR-based food to crystalize over the coming year.

Pairwise said its first product “is expected in 2022.”

Pairwise Gets Greenlight from USDA for CRISPR-Engineered Mustard Greens

While health benefits of mustard greens have long been known, the strong bitter taste and pungent smell has kept this leafy green from going as mainstream as lettuce or kale.

But that could change soon. That’s because CRISPR-focused produce startup Pairwise got approval in mid-August from the USDA for their gene-edited version of Brassica juncea, more commonly known as mustard greens.

According to a release sent to The Spoon, the USDA sent confirmation to Pairwise in mid-August that the company was approved to move forward with their new take on a leafy green that has not been on many menu due to a pungent smell and bitter taste. With changes engineered by CRISPR technologies, Pairwise hopes to create a nutritious alternative to kale and Brussels sprouts that also tastes good.

Pairwise Greens in the field

According to Pairwise, their new mustard greens will feature a strong nutrition profile with supple leaves that hold up well to salad dressings and toppings and will have green and deep purple colors.

When I interviewed Pairwise CEO Tom Adams a month ago, he told me one of the reasons the company focused on mustard greens was the high yield of the crop.

Mustard greens “look just like lettuce, they they feel like lettuce, so if we could eliminate that flavor and make them taste like lettuce that they that they would be like lettuce,” said Adams. “It turns out they actually have another attribute, which is they yield on an acre basis. They yield about three times as much as kale.”

According to Pairwise, they currently have five varieties of the gene-edited produce in field trials. They have plans to expand the field trials in a few months to include the edited product and will provide sample products to partners this fall.

How CRISPR Could Create Produce That Lasts Longer, Tastes Better, and Won’t Make Pickers Bleed

Pairwise is one of the companies making a name for itself developing new types of products using CRISPR. The company is developing consumer-facing brands of produce that offer unique characteristics created through the use of CRISPR toolsets.

I caught up the CEO of Pairwise, Tom Adams, to discuss what the company is working on and to get his thoughts on how CRISPR will change the food system. Below are some excerpts from my interview. Spoon Plus subscribers can watch the interview and read the full, unedited transcript.

What are some examples of these types of CRISPR products with direct consumer benefits?

So a product that we’re interested in, sort of it’s a longer term product, is to create a cherry without a pit. You can imagine being able to just pop a cherry in your mouth and really enjoy that healthy, healthy fruit. Cherries are in season right now. They’re great, but I keep ending up with purple fingers from eating them all. I’d love to be able to just pop them over my mouth and eat them like grape. So that’s the kind of thing where we’re taking it down the barrier so that a consumer can really enjoy the cherry differently.

Now we’ll do other things that help with the overall production system. One of our ideas with cherries is to make it so you can produce cherries year round like we’ve done through 60 years of breeding with blueberries. We now have blueberries every day and I didn’t use to get blueberries every day but now I do.

How could CRISPR could accelerate the development of new forms of produce compared with traditional cross-breeding of crops?

There actually is a pitless plum that somebody isolated a few years ago. It’s not a good tasting plum, so it’s not a variety that sold. But you can cross plums and cherries, and you get chums or clerries or something. It’s not a cherry or a plum anymore. The Bing cherry was bred in 1880 and Bing cherry since then is a clone of that original tree. So if you cross them, that’s not a Bing cherry anymore.

You want to get back to the Bing cherry, you’d cross the chum back to the cherry probably 7 or 8 or 9 times until you get a little bit more cherry genome in it each time until you’re almost cherry again. That’s probably 150 years from now you’d have a pitless cherry. But with gene editing, I know what the mutation is that really resulted in the loss of the pits, so I can just go directly into the cherry and make that mutation. It’s the same endpoint that I would have gotten to through the breeding. It’s just 150 years faster.

One thing you’re working on is berries. Can you tell us more?

The blackberries I buy in the grocery store, I could take or leave. And that’s because they’re the variety that had some mutations in it that allow it to be more productive through the season. This mutation just happens to be in a variety that just doesn’t taste good. It’s very high acid. It’s not a really great berry. So we’re taking berries that taste like the ones in the Northwest and we’re putting in the same mutations that you’d see on the bad tasting ones that allow for higher productivity, and adding those to the really good tasting one. And then, just for good measure, we’re also going to get rid of the seeds. It turns out that 85% of people don’t really like the seeds in blackberries from our research. And it’s a fairly straightforward path to do that and then remove the thorns as well, so pickers aren’t bleeding.

What impact could CRISPR have on food in a decade?

10 years from now, what I’d like to picture is a lot of produce that not just that has gene editing in it, but is actually more approachable for people. We all grow up being told and taught that we should eat lots of fruits and vegetables, but only 9% of people in the United States eat the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables. And given 5% are vegetarians, that doesn’t speak real well for the rest of us. So I want to see a variety of things that are more approachable for people.

You mentioned food waste. I think there’s an opportunity to make a substantial difference in shelf life. So when I go into a convenience store, it’s not a choice between a hot dog and a rotten banana. I can get a bowl of berries or something healthy like that as a snack and or pitless cherries. So that’s really our vision is to create a whole different marketplace of foods that fit people’s lifestyles. We eat a lot more food through snacking today than we did 50 years ago and we need to match our food up with that.

To watch the full interview of our interview with Tom Adams or to read the full transcript, just subscribe to Spoon Plus.