Fresh Del Monte is partnering with an Australian university to identify new ways of growing bananas that are less susceptible to Tropical Race 4 (TR4), also known as fusarium or Panama disease.
Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., through its subsidiary Del Monte International GmbH, is working with Queensland University of Technology (QUT), located in Brisbane, Australia, on the project, according to a news release.
TR4 is a fungus that has plagued banana crops for decades, spreading faster over the last decade, and could hurt the future availability of bananas for consumers, according to the release.
“We are addressing critical issues facing our industry as we speak,” Hans Sauter, chief sustainability officer, and senior vice president of research and development of agricultural services for Fresh Del Monte, said in the release.
“The ability to leverage the capabilities of the team at QUT is very exciting. We see the potential with these revolutionary technologies, and we are looking forward to putting these tools to work to solve real problems facing the world.
Fresh Del Monte is proud to partner with a respected research university facility like QUT in this endeavor.”
James Dale, lead research professor at QUT, has developed promising results utilizing the revolutionary CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) family of DNA sequences utilized to edit genes within organisms, or “gene-editing,” according to the release.
“These new gene-editing technologies represent a new opportunity for addressing the global food supply in ways we never imagined,” Dale said in the release. “Our partnership with Fresh Del Monte represents a great opportunity for our research to reach society in an efficient and commercially feasible manner.”
The release said the Fresh Del Monte and QUT research collaboration is staged with multiple phases over the next five years, ultimately resulting in novel commercial resistant banana variety releases.
