Gene-Edited Bananas Scale
UK ag‑tech Tropic closed a €91.3M (≈$105M) Series C to scale gene‑edited, Panama‑disease‑resistant bananas and other climate‑resilient crops, accelerating greenhouse production worldwide [][]. The round is explicitly aimed at commercializing disease‑resistant varieties to protect global supplies from Panama disease — a major threat to banana production [].
The Series C was co‑led by Forbion’s Bioeconomy Fund and Corteva’s Catalyst platform forbion.com, with additional participation from Just Climate, IQ Capital, ABN AMRO, Invest International, Temasek and Five Seasons Ventures nordic9.com. Tropic says it commercially launched two new banana varieties in 2025 — a non‑browning banana and an extended‑shelf‑life (ESL) banana — with the ESL variant reported to add up to 12 days of green life. tropic.bio The company plans to establish a mother plantation and begin deploying TR4‑resistant Cavendish at commercial scale from 2027, and will expand its large‑scale plant production capacity to support commercial partnerships, CEO Gilad Gershon explained. agfundernews.com Tropic has already inked industry deals to scale the technology, including a May 2025 strategic collaboration with Syngenta Vegetable Seeds to deploy its GEiGS® platform tropic.bio, and its non‑browning banana featured on TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025 list. aglifemedia.com
