Many of us have experienced a basket of fruit filled with beautiful, bright yellow bananas, perfect on the day of purchase but unrecognizable forty-eight hours later. Speckled, soft, they often end up as an impromptu dessert or in the trash. For years, the question remains the same: how to avoid these bananas that turn black at lightning speed?
Bananas are one of the most consumed fruits in the world, with over 100 billion sold each year. A large portion is lost along the way: more than 60% of exported bananas never reach a plate. And in households, the same scenario repeats itself, from the fruit bowl to the compost.
When a banana ripens, it produces a natural gas, ethylene, which accelerates its own ripening process and that of neighboring fruits. Its flesh also contains an enzyme, polyphenol oxidase, which reacts in contact with oxygen when the fruit is cut or bruised. It is this chemical reaction that turns the bright yellow to dark brown in a matter of hours.
There are simple ways to slow down this process. Keeping bananas at room temperature, away from apples, pears, or avocados, wrapping the stem to limit ethylene diffusion, or even hanging them to avoid pressure points can extend the lifespan by a few days. But for a fruit that stays yellow for more than ten days extra, the answer now comes from laboratories.
A British company, Tropic Biosciences, has developed a genetically edited banana that browns much more slowly. Their CRISPR technology acts like a pair of scissors on DNA, disabling genes linked to the enzyme responsible for browning. As a result, the flesh would brown about 30% less within 24 hours after peeling and would remain yellow for around twelve hours once sliced.
Researchers have also created another line where ethylene production is greatly reduced. These fruits would gain over ten days of shelf life compared to a regular banana, allowing for slower transport with less refrigeration. In a very fragile supply chain that loses over 60%, the impact on food waste would be significant, with an estimated decrease of over 25% in emissions, equivalent to removing about two million cars from circulation.
This banana that doesn’t brown has been approved in the Philippines, then granted sales authorization in North and Latin America. In Europe, the debate on new genomic techniques is ongoing, delaying its arrival in French shelves. In the meantime, wrapping the stem, keeping other fruits away, or blending very ripe bananas into a smoothie or banana bread remain the simplest solutions.
Sources
