These New Non-Browning GM Apples Are Headed for the Market

But will people actually buy them?

BEC CREW
16 FEB 2015

The US government has approved the commercial planting of a new variety of genetically engineered (GM)
apples that are resistant to going brown - either when cut or bruised.

Developed over almost two decades by Canada-based agriculture and biotechnology company, Okanagan
Specialty Fruits, the so-called 'non-browning Arctic apples' were first planted in test orchards back in 2003
and 2005, and have been tested and refined over the past decade.

"Right now, to make fresh-cut apple slices and put them in the bag, 35 or 40 percent of the cost is the
antioxidant treatment," the company's president, Neal Carter. The idea of these new GM apples, he says, is
that food service companies will no longer have to treat their apples with preservative chemicals. "So you
could make a fresh-cut apple slice 30 percent cheaper.

The new apples have been genetically altered to ensure that the production of an enzyme called polyphenol
oxidase - which is responsible for the browning effect - is slowed down within the fibres of the fruit. The
developers achieved this by adding copies of the gene that produces this enzyme into the apples, which
sounds a little counterintuitive, but it works because the apples respond to the overproduction of the enzyme
by shutting it all down.

Last November, the US government also approved the commercial sale of GM potatoes that have had their
browning slowed down using a similar technique.

While the apples will still go brown and rot eventually, theyll do it at a much slower rate, and ideally, they
would have already been eaten by then.

Because Okanagan Specialty Fruits is too small an operation to grow and distribute the Arctic apples on its
own, theyre planning to sell commercial licenses for a one-time fee of $1,500 per acre of trees. Carter
told The New York Times that he expects between 2,200 kg (5,000 pounds) and 4,500 kg (10,000 pounds) of
the apples to be ready for the food service market by mid-2016, and stores - in very small quantities - the
following year.