America’s first CRISPR-edited salad is here

This month, food-tech startup Pairwise is rolling out a new variant of kale-like mustard greens that are genetically engineered to be less bitter than the original plant, representing the first US food product created with CRISPR tech to hit the market.

🥬 Some quick background: Mustard greens contain a multitude of vitamins and minerals, but have a bitter peppery flavor when eaten raw – so to make them more appetizing, they’re typically cooked before being consumed.

But a few years back, Pairwise came up with the idea – and subsequently raised $115 million – to genetically modify mustard greens so they would retain their health benefits and taste much better to the average shopper when eaten raw.

• Once its CRISPR-edited product hits grocery store shelves later this summer, Pairwise predicts it’ll replace less-nutritious greens like lettuce in the salads of millions of Americans.
• The startup’s ultimate goal is to harness CRISPR tech to make already-healthy foods more convenient and enjoyable. Case in point: Pairwise has announced future plans to develop pitless cherries and seedless blackberries/raspberries, which it says will be available to US consumers year-round, regardless of season (which, for this cherry-loving writer who can only get them four months outta the year, would be huge).

📝 Bottom line: Pairwise’s modified mustard greens technically could have been created using regular, low-tech breeding methods – aka selecting parent plants with certain traits to produce more desirable offspring – though the addition of CRISPR sped up the process from over a decade to just four years.