Using DNA from tangerines and tobacco, food scientists have made a familiar fruit tastier—and more Instagrammable—than ever. We looked into it so you don’t have to…When I brought my questions to Hans Sauter, Fresh Del Monte’s chief sustainability officer and senior vice president of R&D and agricultural services, he began by offering me a brief history of the fruit.

You may assume, like I did, that pineapples have always been sweet and sunny-colored—but that wasn’t the case prior to the 1990s. Store-bought pineapples of yesteryear had a green shell with light yellow flesh that was often more tart than sweet. Buying a fresh one was a bit of a gamble. “Nobody could tell, really, whether the fruit was ripe or not, and consumption of pineapples was mostly canned product, because people could trust what they would eat there”, Sauter says. The added sugar in some canned pineapple made it a sweeter, more consistent product.

In 1996 the company introduced the “Del Monte Gold Extra Sweet”, yellower and less acidic than anything on the market at the time. Pineapple sales soared, and consumers’ expectations of the fruit were forever changed.

The popularity of the Gold led to an international pineapple feud when fruit rival Dole introduced its own varietal. Del Monte sued, alleging that Dole had essentially stolen its Gold formula. The two companies ended up settling out of court.

With the success of its Gold pineapple, Del Monte was looking for new attributes that could make the pineapple even more enticing to consumers, Sauter says. But breeding pineapples is a slow process; it can take two years or longer for a single plant to produce mature fruit. Del Monte had spent 30 years crossbreeding pineapples with certain desired characteristics before it was ready to launch the Gold. Sauter says the possibility of waiting 30 more years for a new variety was “out of the question.” So in 2005 the company turned to genetic engineering.

…The team landed on a set of 3 modifications to the pineapple genome. They inserted DNA from a tangerine to get it to express more lycopene. They added “silencing” RNA molecules to mute the pineapple’s own lycopene-converting enzymes, which also helped reduce its acidity. (RNA silencing is the same technique used to make non-browning GMO Arctic apples.) Finally, Del Monte added a gene from tobacco that confers resistance to certain herbicides, though representatives for the company say this was simply so its scientists could confirm that the other genetic changes had taken effect—not because Del Monte plans to use those herbicides in production. [Tobacco is frequently used in plant genetic engineering for its tractability.]

…“Consumers love innovation”, says Lauren Scott, chief strategy officer of the International Fresh Produce Association. She sees the Pinkglow as creating excitement around pineapples and likens it to Cotton Candy grapes, a naturally grown hybrid introduced in 2011 that are hugely popular because, well, they taste like cotton candy.

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