Seedless Blackberries and Cherry Bushes: Pairwise Bets CRISPR Can Remake the Food System

Inside the Lab: Seedless Blackberries, Cherry Bushes and a Pipeline of Designer Crops

Inside a Durham laboratory, the agricultural future is sprouting in pots and petri dishes. Startup Pairwise is using the gene-editing tool CRISPR to craft blackberry plants that are simultaneously seedless, thornless and higher-yielding — a triple-threat the company says would take decades through conventional breeding but can be delivered in a handful of years. Though seedless blackberries won’t reach U.S. grocery shelves before 2030, the company has a pipeline that also includes peaches without pits, fruit and nut trees that bear harvests within a year or two, and — in a pot that might confuse an orchardist — one of the world’s first cherry bushes.

The approach marks a deliberate pivot from the GMO era. Instead of inserting foreign DNA, CRISPR acts like targeted molecular scissors, turning a single gene on, off or fine-tuning its expression. Pairwise’s scientists isolated the trait that controls row counts on corn ears and worked with Bayer to optimize it; they are now stacking that edit with other minor-effect traits — shorter stalks, heat tolerance, more efficient fertilizer use — to create varieties with major yield and resilience advantages. “That’s the big unlock, this truly unprecedented ability to imagine the kind of corn we want and create it with speed and scale,” said Michael Graham, head of R&D at Bayer’s crop science division.

The promise stretches far beyond commodity grains. Pairwise’s early focus, driven by CEO Tom Adams’s experience at Monsanto, is on fruits and vegetables consumers buy directly — edits that make food more pleasant to eat, not just more profitable to grow. “We talked about how cool the science was, not what’s in it for you,” Adams recalls of the GMO era. So a seedless blackberry tastes like its seeded counterpart but with a smoother mouthfeel; a bush-grown cherry could slash land requirements and enable mechanical harvesting. The company, which has raised more than $160 million, is now leaning on licensing deals rather than building its own brands, with partnerships spanning Bayer, Corteva, Mars, Sun World and a network of universities and foundations.

Yet the market for gene-edited food is still in its infancy. Pairwise’s first commercial CRISPR product — a less bitter mustard green launched in 2023 — was discontinued months later to focus on bigger-ticket crops. Today the company sells only one edited creation: a high-yielding blackberry variety available in limited quantities in Colombia. More than 50 regulatory approvals across nine countries are already in hand, and even the EU has recently moved to treat most gene-edited crops like conventional ones, but consumer acceptance, funding swings and the glacial pace of agriculture mean the revolution is still years away.

What the CRISPR Push Means for Big Ag, Consumers and the Planet

How Pairwise’s Partnerships Reshape the Competitive Landscape

Unlike the contentious rollout of GMOs, Pairwise has deliberately embedded itself with the agribusiness giants that control commodity seeds. The Bayer collaboration on corn stacking is a direct competitive threat to traditional breeding programs that would take decades to accumulate the same trait profile. Corteva, spending nearly $1.5 billion a year on R&D, aims to release a corn product with four genes edited for disease resistance by 2030 — something vice president Wendy Srnic calls “the holy grail.” For both companies, CRISPR is a way to defend their seed-market dominance while promising farmers productivity gains that reduce the need for new land. The risk for standalone gene-editing startups without such ties is that they get locked out of the distribution channels that reach millions of acres.

The Regulatory Window Is Open — For Now

Governments have largely accepted the argument that gene editing is a sped-up version of conventional breeding, keeping CRISPR crops free from the onerous rules that shackled GMOs. The EU’s recent decision to treat most edited crops as conventional sharply reduces a historic barrier. However, the U.S. FDA still regulates edited animals as if they were drugs, and the broader political and cultural backlash against “Frankenfoods” could easily capture CRISPR if a single high-profile scare emerges. The Make America Healthy Again movement and lingering GMO stigma suggest that public opinion is fragile. For an industry betting its future on consumer acceptance, this regulatory honeymoon is a narrow window to deliver tangible benefits — tastier, healthier, more sustainable food — before suspicion hardens into law.

Can Consumers Stomach Genetically Edited Food?

The economic thesis depends on whether shoppers will pay for a smoother berry or a non-browning banana. Adams’s bet is that direct-to-consumer edits — seedlessness, better flavour, easier peeling — can avoid the “what’s in it for me” void that dogged herbicide-tolerant GMOs. But the early failure of Pairwise’s mustard greens shows that novelty alone doesn’t guarantee shelf space. The drop in ag-tech venture funding — down 70% from a 2021 peak above $50 billion — suggests investors are wary after the struggles of plant-based meat and indoor farming. A consumer-facing CRISPR brand will need to build trust while navigating razor-thin grocery margins, and a small number of vocal opponents could quickly poison the narrative.

Stacking Traits: The Economic Engine of CRISPR

The real commercial power lies in stacking multiple edits. Pairwise didn’t just breed seedlessness into the best-tasting blackberry; it added thornlessness and higher yields simultaneously. Applied to corn, stacking heat tolerance, disease resistance, shorter stalks and nitrogen efficiency can compound into a 20–30% gain in resilience and output — changes that traditional breeding cannot deliver in a single generation. That combinatorial speed is what makes Bayer and Corteva describe the technology as transformative, and it is the metric against which the industry’s venture bets will ultimately be judged.

Crispr’s Chance to Help Smallholder Farmers

Beyond Western supermarkets, Pairwise is collaborating with the Gates Foundation and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture to edit staples like cowpea, cassava and yam for drought and pest resistance. Semi-dwarf yams, for example, could radically reduce the labour burden on African women who typically cultivate them. The upheaval at USAID, however, has slashed budgets for groups like IITA, threatening the pathways that get improved seeds into subsistence farmers’ hands. If that funding gap widens, gene-editing’s pro-poor promise may remain a lab story, with the commercial benefits flowing mainly to large industrial farms.

Where the Gene-Edited Food Revolution Stands — And What Comes Next

• Pairwise’s seedless blackberries won’t land in U.S. stores before 2030; for now, the only commercial gene-edited product the company sells is a high-yielding blackberry variety in Colombia — a small-scale proof point that a consumer market can exist.
• Corteva’s multi-trait disease-resistant corn is targeted for 2030. Field-trial data should begin surfacing over the next two to three years; farms that rely on that seed portfolio will gauge yield and chemical-input savings against current hybrids.
• The EU’s move to regulate gene-edited crops like conventional ones removes the biggest historical market-access barrier. For agribusinesses planning a global rollout, this opens a path to bring edited seed varieties to European growers without the high costs and delays that crippled GMOs.
• Venture capital for ag-tech has cratered since 2021. Startups without deep-pocket partners like Bayer or Corteva face existential funding risk. For investors watching the space, the metric to track is which firms can convert regulatory approvals into commercial planting acreage within two growing seasons.
• Consumer-facing edited foods will need to justify their existence. The less-bitter mustard green that failed offers a cautionary tale: an edit that doesn’t clearly solve a pain point for shoppers — or that gets pulled before awareness builds — burns cash and trust. Future launches should be measured by repeat purchase data, not just novelty buzz.