Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Welcome to PMA Takes on Tech, the podcast that explores the problems, solutions, people and ideas that are shaping the future of the produce industry. I'm your host, Vonnie Estes, vice president of technology for the Produce Marketing Association. And I've spent years in the Ag tech sector so I can attest, it's hard to navigate this ever changing world in developing and adopting new solutions to industry problems. Thanks for joining us and for allowing us to serve as your guide to the new world of produce and technology. My goal of the podcast is to outline a problem in the produce industry and then discuss several possible solutions that can be deployed today.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
This podcast is sponsored by Behr. At Behr, we believe human ingenuity can shape the future of agriculture. For more than 150 years, we've used science and imagination to advance health and nutrition, and together we can achieve so much more. We've committed to a world where biodiversity thrives in harmony with humankind, where hunger and climate change are terms relegated to history books, where farms are more sustainable with plants that are more adaptive and resilient to help improve life for families and communities. In short, where agriculture is part of the solution.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
As a new leader in agriculture, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to grasp this moment to continue moving humanity forward by tirelessly shaping what's possible. Today's podcast is your opportunity to hear a rebroadcast of a well attended PMA virtual town hall on gene editing. Gene editing has been thrust into the public interest. It's a breeding tool that can help make our food more nutritious, convenient, and grown more sustainably. As we will hear, it also has the potential to save the banana from a devastating disease. One of the things that we learned from the Q&A and conversations around this virtual town hall is the misunderstanding of the difference between GMO and gene editing.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
GMO stands for genetically modified organism and refers to plants created by altering genes with laboratory techniques in ways that conventional forms of breeding and nature can't, often by inserting genetic material from one species to another. There are very few genetically modified foods in produce. These include the innate potato, Arctic Apple, some sweet scorn and squash varieties, the papaya and the new Del Monte pink pineapple. Gene editing is also a molecular tool that can alter genes in an organism's genome, but gene editing is done without inserting any foreign DNA.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
The types of changes gene editing does to the genetic code, like deletions or alteration of genes, occur in nature all the time. With gene editing tools, breeders can make desired changes more precisely and quicker than it would take in nature to get the sought after benefit. We will hear from a panel of executives from three top companies working in the area. Haven Baker is the co-founder and chief business officer at Pairwise. Fayaz Khazi is the CEO from Elo Life Systems and Gilad Gershon is the CEO from Tropic Biosciences. Let's join the conversation as Haven Baker is introducing Pairwise.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
I represent Pairwise. Our mission is to build a healthier world through better fruits and vegetables, and we're primarily focused on increasing fruits and vegetable consumption. And we're trying to do that through differentiation, so we're using gene editing to create new items that, I mean, consumers haven't seen or solve a consumer problem that prevent people from eating fruits and vegetables. And I can talk a little bit more about that later.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Thank you. Fayaz, how about you?
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
Sure. Yeah. I'm here representing Elo Life Systems. I serve as the CEO of Elo, and Elo is a North Carolina based food and agriculture company which leverages computational biology and the power of genome editing together to develop products that improve human health and the health of the planet. And what we are trying to do here is two fold. One part is we are trying to show and demonstrate to the world that there is a whole lot to be leveraged by combining multiple technologies, and therefore, enable development, faster development in multiple products, especially in specialty crops.
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
Gilad Gershon, I represent Tropic Biosciences. We're based in the UK with a team of just over 100 professionals. Tropic Biosciences we've around since 2016, we focus on using gene editing in a host of tropical crops. And currently our main focus is around three of these which are coffee, bananas and rice, where we focus on the use of the technology in developing different products.
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
Some of them intended to improve the quality of the crop, for example, our low caffeine coffee variety, and others more then to increase the resistance to different diseases. For example, different projects in banana against Panama disease or in rice against rice blast. So again, it's a pleasure to be here and happy to participate and address any questions.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Great, thank you. So I thought we'd start with my first question of just giving people an understanding of how gene editing works. Not necessarily technically, but when you work in a company that develops products using gene editing where do the ideas come from? How do you work with it? What kind of resources does it require? And how do you really get a product to market that's been gene edited? Fayaz, why don't we start with you and you can walk us through.
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
Sure. Our platform gene editing technology is called Arcus Technology, it's a technology that's derived from chlamydomonas. So we call it's nature's own editing system, and so it's a highly versatile platform that can do pretty much what we want it to do with a great deal of efficacy and efficiency. So in a typical process, what we try not to do is we try not to guess that this is what the market needs. So this is where technology and business models come into the picture. So we rely heavily on those who are leaders in the business, who are leaders in the market, to direct us towards what is that trait that the consumer has been looking for, for multiple years?
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
And what we bring to the table is how does one go about developing that trait? For example, our partnership in banana with Dole, the biggest problem in banana is TR4 Fusarium Panama disease, and this is where Dole came to us and they said, "We need to solve this." And so the very first thing was for us to identify those genes that contribute to resistance to Fusarium. And then from a genome editing perspective, we would identify approaches which fit into certain regulatory categories, or whatever the consumer has the preference towards, and then start developing or working in that direction. So that's just one example.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Thank you, Gilad how about you?
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
Sure, with pleasure and I'm happy to share my view. I have to say that unlike some of the experts here, my background is not in biology so for me, the last five or six years have been very educational. And I think that there's a difference between how I imagined this process to be five or six years ago, and what we've gone through over that time. With a different thinking about taking a product from the conceptualization phase and into the market, I think there's two main phases. And again, it's a very broad simplification I would say, but usually, when we begin it's very much science oriented.
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
We're fortunate to have a lot of really bright researchers and fantastic scientific advisors, we're constantly bouncing around ideas that we test through the market and try to see more. And if we're talking about for example rice, we look at different diseases and all the diseases that we can address, are these quality traits that are interesting? Maybe even on a personal note, I think that a lot of the conversations that we have, we have an open WhatsApp group for the team and every day I see the team keep shooting different research papers that they encounter and there's always the question, is this interesting or is that interesting?
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
So I would say that from that initial process, we end up with a few interesting products that we think that we would want to pursue or not. And then we have a good process of testing it against the market and seeing if those really have potential to justify the investment and the time to market. So this is the initial and usually the fun part, so after that there's a very long process of technological development, but I think this is also where there's different components that come into play outside of the technology phase. So very clearly, intellectual property is a massive component in that and we try to include these professionals very early on because that could have a massive impact on the commercial opportunity in the life of the product in the market.
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
And business development is massive, the different products require different partnerships and different collaborations, and we try to do that from an early stage. The least fun part I have to say is the regulation, which I'm saying it's the least fun because it's actually incredibly complex at sometimes. And at least in our experience, there's not a lot of people globally that are really big experts in the space, so we try to work with these professionals, again, relatively from an early stage to make sure that we tick all the boxes and we address our development in a mature phase. There's a fun part in the beginning, but the execution of making sure that, again, everything is done properly that can take several years and involve a lot of professionals, many of them true experts in their fields.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
All right. Thank you. Yeah, we'll talk some more about regulation and especially get your input from Europe and the UK, which is different than the U.S. Haven, how about you? Walk us through how Pairwise thinks about products and product development, and what it takes to get to market?
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
You bet. So maybe separate the two things we've heard and a little bit on the idea phase, where the ideas come from, and then maybe I'll go a little bit more in the nuts and bolts about what gene editing is and how you eventually get to see plants or a product if that's okay, briefly. So we've taken a different approach which generally in agriculture, most technology development and in a lot of things is incremental, right? You're trying to solve last year's problems, but you're not trying to take this great leap forward. Again, we're about driving consumption with consumers, and where have we seen fantastic consumption increases?
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
And if you look in the last 30 years, it's things like baby carrots, and blueberries, and actually seedless watermelon, for example. And we've seen both growth rates that have been impressive as well as consumption increases, so that's what we're after. So for example, we're interested in cherries and so the first idea was, if we could just get a mirror around we'd add a whole bunch of consumption. And we hired a consultant and we had them go survey a whole bunch of cherry companies and growers, and only one out of 20 came back and said, "Please take the pits out." So that's the great leap forward to not have to spit out the pit, but yet it's not obvious.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
So then all right we'll say, "Okay, now that's our idea, can we create a pitless cherry?" What we would do is we would go look in other all relatives of cherries, peaches, plums, pushes, ornamentals, and say, "Has nature already produced a seedless or pitless one?" And it turns out it has, and then the question is okay, "So could you do that through conventional breeding?" It turns out you can, but it would take about 150 years. Because you'd bring in this rare variant and you'd cross it with a cherry, and what you get won't be either a cherry or the rare variant and you keep crossing, 150 years later you might have a pitless cherry.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
And we'll do now is say, "Okay, can we make that genetic change? It's very small, it's sexually compatible, and can we do that with CRISPR?" And so we'll take a couple of years to develop this process of getting the CRISPR into the plant, then we'll take a couple of years to make the plant. And then if it magically all works, and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't, now we've got one tree with pitless cherry, and now we have to go create root stock and clone it and go to market, and that takes about another five years to get all those orchards going. So where you had 150 years for the regular processes, these new breeding techniques can shorten that to what we're thinking about is 10 years for cherries.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
And just for in our case, we're about three years in, so we think we'll get there by the end the decade. Some of the other things that we're working on berries and leafy greens are much faster, so hopefully that helps Vonnie.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah, I think that's a really good way to talk about it, because people say, "Oh, this is so much faster, it's so fast." So then a lot of people think that's going to happen really quickly, like within a year you're going to have all these products on the market, but like you said, it's not that fast. It still takes a lot of time, and there's a lot of checks and balances, and there's a lot of testing, and so there is work that goes into it and it takes a while to get these products on the market. So I'm going to continue to work through some list of questions, but I do welcome questions from the audience because one of the things that we want to do around gene editing is make sure that we're bringing everyone that's involved in the whole food supply chain along with us.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And the understanding of what gene editing is, what the benefits are, what the concerns are, so this is a great platform to be able to ask your question. It's rare that you would have three experts like this that are working in the field, so really ask your questions and I'll try to work through as many of the questions as I can, and we'll get answers to your questions if we're not able to answer them on today's program. So I am going to look at some of these other questions. So what is the biggest bottleneck in getting new traits to market? Where is innovation getting stuck right now?
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
The number one thing in my opinion is the lack of disconnect between real consumer needs and the perceived consumer needs, and I think there needs to be some level of leveling between those things. And there's always that cycle of hype and then leveling off, and then what comes out in the other end is something that the market always wanted, but didn't really know that it wanted. Something like one of the examples is plant based foods. Plant based foods it was a need in the consumer space, and it showed up over the last few years and we are riding the wave.
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
And then the second part is, I want to emphasize that science or the biology of the plant has never been the bottleneck, but still in this day and age we still continue to believe that there are certain bottlenecks, technological bottlenecks. I think that's a personal bias in those of us who are in the industry and those of us who are in the sciences who believe those, but that's changing. And then the third part is the lack of or improving situations in terms of harmonization of regulatory guidelines across the globe. So to me, those are the three different things that always show up on my radar every time the bottleneck question is up on the table.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
We got lots of good ideas, and more good ideas than we know what to do with. Our primary bottleneck is that just like in breeding, a raspberry breeding program is not a strawberry breeding program, which is not a pineapple breeding program. Each of these crops, and sometimes each variety, requires its own CRISPR system. And that tech development is a couple of years of work, and it's maybe as much as a dozen scientists or more getting that right. And so we see this crop by crop, and all of that technology has already been developed in the row crops by the big Ag companies, but for fruits and vegetables each one of these is different.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
And sometimes a university have done this before like in strawberries, and sometimes there's been absolutely no effort and the companies have to do that from scratch, but each crop is a different system and for us it's a primary technology development area right now. We're on track where we've developed those technologies.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Hey Haven, I'll pick on you on this one a little bit. When I look at it from where I sit since I'm no longer in a technology company, I'm concerned about the market pull through of these products. And so when you look at are retailers going to carry the products? Are consumers going to accept the products? Kind of going into the social license part of it. In the products, the produce products that you're developing, is there a concern that there's not going to be pull through? Or how do you think about that?
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
I don't know, do you actually like the pits in cherries Vonnie? We're actually not that concerned. I think there needs to be a clear benefit, and you need to be transparent, and so let me give you another example. We're working on a seedless blackberry among blackberries, and we're getting the taste right too so it tastes really good, but we've surveyed blackberry buyers and 85% of them do not like the seeds. There's a few people who like the crunch, every once in a while someone says I really like to chew on them, but most people don't like them. And then there are a bunch of other consumers that won't buy because they get their seeds or maybe they have diverticulitis or something.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
So our goal is to expand these markets, but I think that you're right, that you have to have a clear benefit, and if you have a clear benefit I don't think they'll be an issue. Now, the overall technology acceptance, it is new this time and it does help that gene editing is not GMO. So this is another breeding technique, it's not GMO, at least in the U.S and most of South America, Australia and Japan, and so we've got really good alignment, but this just get back to is the benefit really there for consumers to try something new?
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah, I think that's really the case, and we've talked about this in the industry a lot about some of the early traits in GMOs, but if you have a benefit that consumers really want, I think that changes the conversation. And I think we were talking about bananas that both other companies are working on, and if you're going to save the banana industry just like we saved the papaya industry, I think those become different conversations. And I think that's really we need kind of the killer app. Why so much emphasis on consumer needs rather than agronomic needs of growers?
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
I'm happy to address it. I think that it really addresses your earlier comment about the market pull. I think that when we think about the value chain of some of these products, we do need to take into consideration the different components of it. So you have the growers, you have the processors, and you have the consumers, and the reality is that each one of them seek different types of values. So for example, if we think about disease resistance, or yield it could be very appealing for growers. Whereas, perhaps higher or better nutritional content or with other type of quantity traits is something that's very appealing for consumers.
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
And I think that, at least for us, the Holy Grail is trying to combine both. Meaning that if you have a killer type application for the farmers addressing a major need like climate change, drought, diseases, you have a very strong entry point in the market. So perhaps the seed market is smaller than the consumer market, but then you have this very strong call it adoption. If you can, at least in our view, bolt on top of that also a quality type for them it opens up not just the production margin, but also the premium that the consumer can pay, that can be incredibly important.
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
I can say that in Tropic Biosciences, I would say probably over the last three years we've dedicated more and more of our time and effort into agronomic traits. Partly because I think it's realistic to assume and over the last year we've seen it come into play more and more, that with climate change the challenges that farmers are going to experience are going to grow more and more. So, at least in our view, I think we are transitioning into a period where people are going to speak more and more about diseases unfortunately, but I think as an industry if we can combine both of these, it's magic.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
Maybe I'll take a different take on the same question and try to be brief. I look at the salad industry and we're getting ready to bring some new products to market so I've been buying everything that's out there and bringing it home. And my kids, and I got a bunch of kids, flat out tell me, "I do not want to eat anything with cabbage in it, I want Caesar salad." And so we want to bring healthy green, but all they want is romaine. I mean, they do the iceberg if we let them too, but this gets to this disconnect that our mission is to increase fruits and vegetable consumption, we're trying to grow the category and grow the industry.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
And so that's probably a place to start with the consumer first. The other thing is the technology is expensive now. 10 years from now the technology will be quite a bit cheaper, and maybe we can work on these diseases that happen every other year, but finding a consistent problem that will still be a problem in five years after you spend all this money developing products, that's an important point and I think the consumer is a much better place to start with that than probably the farmer.
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
I would agree with both you guys. And also as a slight qualifier, climate change is something that's here now, and we've been talking about HLB, and we've been talking about Fusarium PR4, and Pierce's disease in grapes and what have you, so those are big binary questions. Your consumer has decided at this point based on all the surveys and all the data, there is a technology pull, there is a need for technology to solve these problems. And therefore, we are in the space. On the flip side, our zero melon program for example, there is also a hybrid need for a natural zero calorie sweetener that we are producing in watermelon at scale to get over the bottlenecks of utilization of monk fruit based sweeteners in beverages and food items.
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
So that's where I think the the consumer pull will then instigate or initiate an inquiry, but then input traits, agronomic traits, and what have you, based on the demand that we create on the consumer side. What I'm trying to say is, they are not independent of each other, it is which one pulls the other and at what time? And it depends on the crop, it depends on the time of day, and depends on the market segment.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah, I would add to that, just as my experience of working for a lot of technology companies in the '90s. Is that one of the things that I think we realized is how important it is to bring the consumers along in this conversation. And I think in some of the early products that were genetically modified with grower traits, the consumers felt like they weren't getting the benefit, and they felt like they were taking a risk. And so I think a lot of the focus with gene editing is just been to to make sure that consumers understand and that they're getting this amazing benefit that technology is bringing to them in a safe way.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So those of us who showed the scars of early genetic modification, I think this is a way to make sure that consumers are brought along. What do you think will be the future of agriculture related with the farmer's adoption of genetically modified crops being based on GMOs or gene editing? Will both coexist in the market, or GMOs are going to be displaced sooner or later?
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
I think in produce you won't see GMOs. One, they're too small of markets, there are some things that gene editing can't do, right now. I mean, Gilad is actually more cutting edge on this with insect resistance, but insects resistance right now is a GMO trait and I'm not sure you can create that with gene editing, maybe you can someday. But I think with produce with the small crops will want to stay gene edited, there's plenty of innovation to be done there and it'll be a long time. So row crops, it's probably going to be a mixture of technologies.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah.
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
I mean, we need to build on that and absolutely I agree with that. I think that what is likely, and I'm going to change this differentiation between genetic and GMO is the time and cost to market. So GMO with the regulatory requirement it will always be more expensive to make, and if we think about produce the likelihood that some of these GM type traits is going to make any return on its investment is low. So absolutely agree with Haven's analysis that something very catastrophic will need to happen in order to justify a GM trait, and you mentioned the papaya which is one good example to that. Well, in row crops it can justify it, there's GM trait that cannot be created using gene editing, and it does have a return on the investment over long terms. These two things can coexist.
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
Yeah. I think in the near future based on where we are with the secure rule and whatnot, those two categories will blend into one products of biotechnology category. And that is we won't see any true transgenics, but you might see a blending of editing and GMO recycled elements from the past GMO components very soon.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Here's a question, I love this question, and none of us know the answer for sure, but I'd love to hear your opinions. We currently see the wonders of gene editing and science in the medical field with the COVID vaccine, but yet even with this science and its success we are seeing public resistance. What can the food industry learn from the COVID vaccine experience?
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
You're not going to keep everyone happy. I think maybe another aspect of some of our consumer studies that will be obvious to some people in industry, but maybe not to everyone. Which is that when you go study a produce buyer and you want to study them, we would study it by berries, or in the past did it by potatoes, there's a percentage of the population that wants to know everything, right? Every last detail you can possibly get, they want to know all the information.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
And sometimes those are your organic buyers where it might be 10 or 15% of the population, but there's another 50% of population that don't want to know anything. They just want to buy a product, not engage with it emotionally and enjoy it, keep it simple. And so I think that that's one of the challenges we have with all these new technologies. It doesn't matter whether it's self driving cars, or AI, or better iPhones, is how do you satisfy an audience or a customer segment where one part of the population is never satisfied with the information, and a lot a large portion don't really want to engage, they just want to enjoy their item and move on with their lives?
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
And so I think that that'll be one of the challenges that we'll continuously have in this fields and others is getting the appropriate level of communication to the right audiences. And maybe that we were in a pandemic, I don't think that quite happened this last go around. We tended to over saturate some of these markets with too much information, or the wrong information or too early information that we got pushback.
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
I would agree. And part of it is what we are trying to avoid is to get into that conversation, because it's very difficult, it's the situation to please 100% of the consumers. And therefore what we are trying to address are these big, hairy problems where there is a massive technology pull. And I think in those kinds of situations, the question always is it's like I mentioned before, it's a binary thing. Would you rather go without bananas? Or would you rather go without natural zero calorie sweetener? Or do something else? Or live at status quo?
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
And in those kinds of scenarios for us, I think two components come into the picture. One is the commercializing entity or our partners become a big component of that data and keeping the consumers happy and satisfied. And then the second part is for us, what we have learned over the COVID period is that there are technological solutions for any kind of problems. Yes, it may not make 100% of the consumers happy, but those are viable solutions, and we have seen this over the last year and a half that it is a life saving approach the COVID vaccine.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So a number of people in the chat saw the New York Times article that was in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday, and would like to know what your reaction to that article is and what reaction you've gotten. And in the article, it's a great article I recommend anyone read it, Pairwise is interviewed, so Haven why don't we start with you and see what reaction you've gotten from the article, what you thought of the article, and then we'll hear from the other two panelists.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
I think that overwhelmingly, the response we've received has been positive, and I think there's two levels of that. One is the reporter that wrote it was interested in the products they're writing and also Kathy Martins and some of these others. So the products you'd start with there's some signals that products are interesting, which is great market feedback or pre-market feedback. The other piece is that an institution like the New York Times which has an incredible reach, is willing to engage on the conversation in general.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
I think that's a very positive signal for this field. So it's been overwhelmingly positive from our perspective, and I think maybe the last thing is, is that we do think transparency is really, really important both for the consumer and the public in general. And I think you'll see some of that paying off as if you can be as open as you can be, that people recognize the sincerity and it's easier to get to these benefits without the secrecy.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Any other comments on the article? Positive or negative?
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
It was a great read and it was a very well written article, and congratulations to Haven and his team for great coverage. And I think it's an overall great win for the industry, because it's the next level of dialogue, right? It is not about whether or not this is good, dangerous or safe, it is what is the benefit? And how are the industries and the consumers and the companies all taking the technology forward into products of the future? So to me, I welcome the article.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah, I thought it was really fantastic and really put a human face and human stories, and it's a way when you look at how do we communicate to consumers about this type of technology? This is a great way to do it with colorful pictures and personal stories and benefits, so I really welcomed it. So this is a great question, why is this not considered GMO in the U.S? And are there countries where it is considered GMO?
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
The difference here is for most the world, outside Europe, and I guess New Zealand, that if you're using foreign DNA, so DNA that didn't come from the species or the family you're working on, it's considered GMO. If it could have breeding it's just being done faster, then it's like many of the other technologies that we are already using like DNA chips and things like that. It's just a laboratory methods to make breeding faster, and that's what makes it non-GMO. It's really that there's nothing there's no more foreign material left in the plant.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
There's a number of questions around transparency and communication. And this is certainly a conversation that's happening in the industry of if you're using gene editing, and this is for the U.S, and you don't right now it's not considered GMO. How do we communicate with consumers? The consumers want to know given the choice, is there going to be a code? Is there going to be a sticker? What will happen when gene edited products in the produce industry hit the market?
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
Well, since we're going to go first, I'll say all our products are going to be branded. So it's not only going to be differentiate it's going to be branded, and we probably won't have the big technology story in the package, that'll be on the website, but it'll be transparent and clear. And so I think I can't say for other approaches, but initially that's one of the reasons we're going to have branded produce.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
That makes sense.
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
It's got to be and I don't know Haven, is you're innate potato website still on? Do you know?
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
I haven't checked it in a few months.
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
No, I really liked what you guys did there back when you were at Simplot, there was a link and think there was a QR code you could go in and that would open up the website, and in there they had all the details of the technology. But I think that way, those who are seeking details or the information that's available to them, but you don't want to have too many technical details printed on the label or whatever. But that's how we are looking at our zero melon product, and also our chickpea products as well.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So you would have some kind of a QR code or some kind of link where people could find out, but if they picked up the product to buy it, they wouldn't necessarily know? I'm just clarifying.
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
I think it would be clearly labeled that it's a product of genome editing. And how exactly it was edited, and what was edited, and what was changed, and all the details, whether this would have been a natural change or whatever would be available on our website.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
I've got a great comment here from someone from Del Monte saying that they're not seeing any consumer resistance on the pink pineapple.
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
Absolutely.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So I didn't know that, that's great to hear. I still haven't had one, anyone want to send me one I'll take it, but they look great.
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
But maybe that's a good example of communication. I think that eventually, I think all of the different products that the companies represented here and others we're working are quite valuable and things that we're very proud in, and again, the Del Monte pink pineapple, which is delicious and I think is a phenomenal product, are the same. So I think maybe instead of thinking about it as being very defensive and saying this is what... Being in a position where we need to explain as to defend our product, I think we can be in a position where we can be very proud and say this product was developed using gene editing and it allows you to be more nutritious.
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
Or we saved a lot of chemicals, or we allowed for use of less water in production, so there are ways to address that. Again, good example of that and someone mentioned in the Q&A, the Arctic Apple from Okanagan. I think that the way that they explain it on the packaging was this is a GMO apple, but if we didn't make this apple non-brown using genetics, we would have used to use like sulfate et cetera so it's your choice. And people buy that Apple, it's a good Apple.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
If it takes 10 years or so for a new gene edited product to get to market given the costs and the licenses et cetera, is the pain worth the gain versus just best plant breeding?
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
Depends on the crop, first of all. Some might take 10 years and some might take four years. And then the pain versus gain also depends on the crop and the market. So, for example bananas, we hope to get to resistance trait very quickly, but the scaling up and adoption of that in the plantations is going to take some time, right? So that's the reality of the industry. On the same note, if you develop something that's suited for vertical farm, let's say you're developing a trait in lettuce or everything there now Pairwise is doing or Topic is doing in that space, that could take a shorter period of time. So either way, I think if you have a successful consumer focused trait, or a quality trait, I'm in the business because I do believe that the pain is worth the gain.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Even if these new gene edited products have attractive consumer traits, big retailers will still need to trial them and they have been written reticent to do this with GMO, how will you change this? And do you think this is an issue?
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
It's interesting. I mean, I think that that question is well framed, but I think the other examples of tech food have grown quite rapidly, whether it's the plant based milks or the Impossible Burger, or things like that. And I mean that's maybe an older view in the world and different retailers will be different, but when we do our consumer surveys and we look at all the other new tech enhanced foods we think this is absolutely on trend, and the innovation will be important. And frankly, you'll want to start with places where produce is important for the retailers, where it's not just about cost, it's about driving a better consumer experience.
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
Maybe another benefit in this regard of gene editing is the precision. I think that when you try to bring something that's absolutely different from everything that everyone used to consume, there's a lot less certainty. But when we think about genetic traits, a lot of the time these are very, very clear and very well defined. So for example, you can have exactly the same fruit that everyone is used to, the same size, color and even the taste and maybe you only change one nutrient in it or a disease resistance. So it's a much more controlled change, and to some degree what we're seeing is that it creates more confidence from the industry itself.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
How will you access germplasm and hybrid varieties? Do you consider collaborating or partnering with fruit and vegetable or other seed companies? So quick answer on that from each of you.
Dr. Fayaz Khazi, Elo Life Systems:
Our business model is entirely based on partnering, so we access through our partners and we work only on elite germplasm and nothing else.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Thanks.
Gilad Gershon, Tropic Biosciences:
I think for us, when we select the crops that we focus on and develop from zero and eventually become dominant players within these crops, we actually look for crops where we can access not just an elite germplasm, but also the distribution without being in the door or connected in the hip to a single provider. We feel that that creates... It doesn't lend itself to healthy margins long term, so I think that venturing into crops where there is a few dominant players that own the germplasm is a challenging in itself. So there's a lot of crops outside that can be addressed.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Okay, Haven wrapping up.
Dr. Haven Baker, Pairwise:
Yeah, real quick. So sometimes elite means bad tasting in produce, right? Where they're high yielding, but they don't taste good. And so we're absolutely part of the germplasm, but we want to bring the best tasting fruit and vegetables forward that we can get. And so we'll actually sacrifice on yield if we have to a little bit to bring that great taste on with the genetic because it doesn't do any good to bring some new attribute, but have the produce not taste good. And that's generally something I should say maybe that gene editing is not doing is enhancing flavor, that's still way too complicated. What we're really doing is adding some other benefit or maybe reducing a negative and so that germplasm selection is really, really important to bring that consumer experiences, make it as positive as it can be.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Great, thank you. I hope you found that episode as fascinating as I did. Gene editing is a precise breeding tool that will help solve many of the problems we are facing today, along with delivering more convenient and tasty fruits and vegetables. Please let me know if you have additional questions or are looking for more resources on the topic. We want consumers to gain the value of the technology to both them and the environment and be able to make informed choices.
Vonnie Estes, PMA:
That's it for this episode of PMA Takes on Tech. Thanks for allowing us to serve as your guide to the new world of produce and technology. Be sure to check out all our episodes at pma.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe, and I would love to get any comments or suggestions of what you might want me to take on. For now, stay safe, eat your fruits and vegetables and we will see you next time.
