Explore our latest insights
Read through for an excerpt from our recently published article in AgFunderNews:
Gene editing is rapidly expanding beyond row crops into specialty crops, animals, and microbes, says Pairwise, which has seen a “dramatic uptick” in licensing deals for its Fulcrum platform over the past 12-18 months and now has 25 licensees covering more than 30 species.
Unlike transgenic plants—which are classified as GMOs as foreign DNA from another species is introduced—gene editing involves tinkering with species’ native genes, which eases the regulatory pathway in a growing number of markets and can deliver speed and precision, two potential gamechangers in breeding, says COO Ian Miller, PhD.
“We’re really enthusiastic about the direction that the regulatory environment is going worldwide,” adds Miller, who says Pairwise is seeing growing interest in Europe now that the EU has enshrined a new, simpler regulatory framework for plants made using new genomic techniques.
“I think there’s an understanding that in many cases, what comes out from gene editing is equivalent to conventional breeding because we’re working within the plant’s own genes. The beauty of gene editing is that if it sits somewhere in the gene pool, you can bring it to bear for a problem.”
.png)
Wageningen, Netherlands and Durham, N.C. — May 26, 2026 — Hudson River Biotechnology (Hudson River) and Pairwise have signed a licensing agreement giving Hudson River access to the Fulcrum® plant gene editing platform. Hudson River will integrate Fulcrum® tools into its editing services, which it offers to crop improvement customers working in vegetable, soft fruit, and other species.
Hudson River is an independent plant biotechnology company based in the Netherlands, specializing in genome editing, plant regeneration and trait development. A Fulcrum® license gives Hudson River access to a broader set of editing tools, complementing their established BioMaas workflow.
"Our customers increasingly recognize genome editing as a crucial part of their breeding tools and come to us for our ability to apply this technology in a transgene-free manner directly in elite lines and flexible partnership models,” said Lotte Westerhof, CSO of Hudson River. “Fulcrum® expands the editing toolbox we can offer, enabling us to support a broader range of applications and opportunities for our customers."
"Partnerships like this one are how Fulcrum® reaches more breeders and more crops," said Ian Miller, COO of Pairwise. "We’re excited to work with Hudson River extending our platform for specialty crops where their customers are already active — accelerating the delivery of beneficial crops to agriculture."
Fulcrum® is Pairwise's integrated plant gene editing platform, encompassing gene editing tools, enzymes, and trait libraries that enable precise changes across a wide range of crop species. The platform is developed and proven in Pairwise's own breeding programs and is made available to partners and licensees worldwide.
About Hudson River Biotechnology
Hudson River Biotechnology is an independent plant biotechnology company focused on advancing crop improvement for a more resilient and sustainable bioeconomy. Combining expertise in genome editing, plant regeneration, and trait development, Hudson River enables breeding companies to integrate next-generation breeding technologies into commercial crop development. For more information, email info@hrb.bio.
About Pairwise
Pairwise is agriculture's gene editing powerhouse, building a healthier world through partnership and plant innovation. Co-founded by CRISPR pioneers, our Fulcrum® Platform accelerates the development of climate-resilient, nutritious, and sustainable crops. As trusted partners to global industry leaders and nonprofit institutions, we help breeders move faster while transforming food and agriculture for farmers, consumers, and the planet. Founded in 2017 and based in Durham, NC, Pairwise is committed to delivering innovations that make food easier to grow and better to eat. For more information, visit www.pairwise.com.
###
Sun World International and Pairwise today announced the formation of a joint venture to collaborate in specialty fruit, beginning with the development of a pitless cherry. Sun World will have exclusive commercial rights to these genetics as they seek a first-to-market position in high-quality pitless cherries. The partnership leverages Sun World’s fruit breeding and licensing expertise with Pairwise’s Fulcrum® platform. As part of the agreement, Sun World will make strategic investments to fund development.
In addition to maximizing yield and mitigating against climate change, one of Sun World’s north stars is providing a demonstrably superior consumer eating experience in every way including optimizing convenience. Sun World has a rich heritage of pioneering convenience-focused innovations, beginning with the SUPERIOR SEEDLESS® table grape in 1972, the Sun World seedless watermelon in 1988, countless contributions to their seedless table grape range over three decades, the commercialization of seedlessness in easy-peel mandarins, and the introduction of the seedless lemon.
“Our focus has long been on offering truly differentiated genetics to our growers with exceptional new traits, flavors, texture and convenience,” said Bernardo Calvo, Sun World’s CEO. “Developing a high-quality pitless cherry is a natural innovation evolution for us and in Pairwise, we’ve found an extraordinary partner already well down this quite complex path.”
Pairwise, which has developed the world's first seedless blackberry, brings an unmatched platform that accelerates the development of in-demand crop traits. Traditional breeding involves a lengthy process, but this approach creates a faster path to fruits that consumers will enjoy while providing growers with crops that offer greater sustainability, improved disease resistance, and higher yields.
"This is a segment of agriculture where there's tremendous opportunity to bring meaningful innovation," said Dr. Tom Adams, CEO of Pairwise. "Sun World has built one of the most successful commercial pipelines in fruit genetics. Combining that expertise with the precision and efficiency of Pairwise’s Fulcrum platform allows us to address unmet consumer and grower needs in a way that hasn't been possible before."
Pairwise will lead the R&D effort, while Sun World contributes its germplasm, breeding infrastructure, and commercial market access. The joint venture is already advancing development work and may explore additional strategic partnerships. In addition to its focus on consumer traits, the collaboration aligns with broader industry efforts to use advanced plant breeding to support sustainable agriculture, reduce waste, and create higher-value outcomes for both consumers and producers.
###
About Sun World
Sun World International is a global fruit variety development and licensing company, propelled by emerging technologies, and rooted since its inception in the principles of sustainability. Sun World pioneered seedless grape varietal development and formalized their fruit genetics program three decades ago. Sun World specializes in table grapes, mandarins, mangoes, stone fruit and cherries and is part of the Bridgepoint Group of private equity investors. www.sun-world.com.
About Pairwise
Pairwise is agriculture’s gene editing powerhouse, building a healthier world through partnership and plant innovation. Co-founded by the inventors of CRISPR, our Fulcrum® Platform accelerates the development of climate-resilient, nutritious, and sustainable crops. As trusted partners to global industry leaders and nonprofit institutions, we help breeders move faster while transforming food and agriculture for farmers, consumers, and the planet. Founded in 2017 and based in Durham, NC, Pairwise is committed to delivering innovation that makes food easier to grow and better to eat. For more information, visit www.pairwise.com.
Sort by
category
Read through for an excerpt from our recently published article in AgFunderNews:
Gene editing is rapidly expanding beyond row crops into specialty crops, animals, and microbes, says Pairwise, which has seen a “dramatic uptick” in licensing deals for its Fulcrum platform over the past 12-18 months and now has 25 licensees covering more than 30 species.
Unlike transgenic plants—which are classified as GMOs as foreign DNA from another species is introduced—gene editing involves tinkering with species’ native genes, which eases the regulatory pathway in a growing number of markets and can deliver speed and precision, two potential gamechangers in breeding, says COO Ian Miller, PhD.
“We’re really enthusiastic about the direction that the regulatory environment is going worldwide,” adds Miller, who says Pairwise is seeing growing interest in Europe now that the EU has enshrined a new, simpler regulatory framework for plants made using new genomic techniques.
“I think there’s an understanding that in many cases, what comes out from gene editing is equivalent to conventional breeding because we’re working within the plant’s own genes. The beauty of gene editing is that if it sits somewhere in the gene pool, you can bring it to bear for a problem.”
Read through for an excerpt from our recently published article in WIRED:
If you wanted to create better blackberries, you could try to breed a variety without the seeds that get stuck in your teeth. Or one without the thorns that make the berries hard to pick. Or you could aim for more environmentally efficient plants that produce more berries per acre with less water and fewer chemicals.
With decades of work and a fair amount of luck, you might achieve one of those goals.
But a North Carolina startup called Pairwise is using the gene-editing technology called Crispr to try to achieve all those goals at once, crafting seedless, thornless, higher-yielding blackberry plants—and in a matter of years rather than decades.
That’s the promise of modern genomics: introducing speed, precision, and the ability to solve multiple problems at once to the glacially slow, haphazard, one-tweak-at-a-time world of crop breeding.
.png)
ST. LOUIS, MO. and DURHAM, NC, June 23, 2026 — Pairwise, a global innovator in agriculture, today announced a licensing agreement with Agragene, a sustainable agricultural technology company developing biological crop pest protection, granting access to Pairwise's Fulcrum® CRISPR platform.
Agragene will integrate Fulcrum® tools into the development of its Precision-Guided Sterile Insect Technology (pgSIT), which produces sterile male insects for proactive control of pest populations, increasing yields for growers. Agragene's first product (KNOCKOUT™ SWD) targets spotted wing drosophila (SWD), an invasive fly responsible for more than $1billion annually in losses to U.S. and Canadian berry, cherry, and other soft fruit crops. Because the technology is highly species-specific, it suppresses only the target pest, leaving crops, beneficial insects such as bees and ladybugs, and the surrounding environment unaffected.
“Growers are running out of options as pests develop resistance to conventional insecticides, and they are looking for tools that are safe, targeted, and sustainable,” said Bryan Witherbee, President and CEO of Agragene. “Our mission is to deliver cleaner pest control that supports healthier crops and a healthier planet. Access to Fulcrum® strengthens the editing technology behind our pgSIT platform and helps us move faster from field trials towards practical tools growers can use.”
“Pairwise works across all of agriculture, which means partnering with people closest to the problems,” said Dr. Tom Adams, CEO of Pairwise. “Agragene is the first to apply Fulcrum® in insect systems, and it's exactly the kind of creative use we hoped good tools would find."
The Pairwise Fulcrum® platform includes proprietary CRISPR editing tools, enzymes, and trait libraries that enable precise genetic changes. Pairwise developed and proved the platform in its own breeding programs and makes it available to partners and licensees worldwide for research and commercial purposes.
About Agragene
Agragene is a sustainable agricultural technology company based in St. Louis, Missouri, developing biological crop pest protection products. Using Precision-Guided Sterile Insect Technology (pgSIT), a CRISPR-based platform, Agragene provides sterile male insects to reduce and control pest populations while reducing reliance on traditional insecticides. Founded in 2017, the company is pursuing commercial product launch in the U.S. and a licensing strategy worldwide. For more information, visit www.agragene.com
About Pairwise
Pairwise is agriculture's gene editing powerhouse, building a healthier world through partnership and plant innovation. Co-founded by early pioneers of CRISPR, Pairwise's Fulcrum® Platform accelerates the development of climate-resilient, nutritious, and sustainable crops. As a trusted partner to global industry leaders and nonprofit institutions, Pairwise helps breeders move faster while transforming food and agriculture for farmers, consumers, and the planet. Founded in 2017 and based in Durham, NC, Pairwise is committed to delivering innovation that makes food easier to grow and better to eat. For more information, visit www.pairwise.com.
.png)
develop more resilient crops, lower the environmental impact and strengthen European food security
This decision positions European growers to access the same modern breeding tools already available to their counterparts globally.
Dan Jenkins, VP of Regulatory and Government Affairs at Pairwise:
"European policymakers deserve credit for keeping this legislation moving, and that persistence paid off. With Europe now on board, growers there will have access to the same modern breeding tools already available to their counterparts in the rest of the world."
Tom Adams, CEO of Pairwise:
"Policies like this matter because they connect innovation to the field and the table. This is exactly the kind of work Pairwise strives to do with our partners. Varieties that are more climate resilient, disease tolerant, and require fewer inputs to grow can now reach European growers and markets. That's good for food security, good for trade, and good for consumers."
##
Wageningen, Netherlands and Durham, N.C. — May 26, 2026 — Hudson River Biotechnology (Hudson River) and Pairwise have signed a licensing agreement giving Hudson River access to the Fulcrum® plant gene editing platform. Hudson River will integrate Fulcrum® tools into its editing services, which it offers to crop improvement customers working in vegetable, soft fruit, and other species.
Hudson River is an independent plant biotechnology company based in the Netherlands, specializing in genome editing, plant regeneration and trait development. A Fulcrum® license gives Hudson River access to a broader set of editing tools, complementing their established BioMaas workflow.
"Our customers increasingly recognize genome editing as a crucial part of their breeding tools and come to us for our ability to apply this technology in a transgene-free manner directly in elite lines and flexible partnership models,” said Lotte Westerhof, CSO of Hudson River. “Fulcrum® expands the editing toolbox we can offer, enabling us to support a broader range of applications and opportunities for our customers."
"Partnerships like this one are how Fulcrum® reaches more breeders and more crops," said Ian Miller, COO of Pairwise. "We’re excited to work with Hudson River extending our platform for specialty crops where their customers are already active — accelerating the delivery of beneficial crops to agriculture."
Fulcrum® is Pairwise's integrated plant gene editing platform, encompassing gene editing tools, enzymes, and trait libraries that enable precise changes across a wide range of crop species. The platform is developed and proven in Pairwise's own breeding programs and is made available to partners and licensees worldwide.
About Hudson River Biotechnology
Hudson River Biotechnology is an independent plant biotechnology company focused on advancing crop improvement for a more resilient and sustainable bioeconomy. Combining expertise in genome editing, plant regeneration, and trait development, Hudson River enables breeding companies to integrate next-generation breeding technologies into commercial crop development. For more information, email info@hrb.bio.
About Pairwise
Pairwise is agriculture's gene editing powerhouse, building a healthier world through partnership and plant innovation. Co-founded by CRISPR pioneers, our Fulcrum® Platform accelerates the development of climate-resilient, nutritious, and sustainable crops. As trusted partners to global industry leaders and nonprofit institutions, we help breeders move faster while transforming food and agriculture for farmers, consumers, and the planet. Founded in 2017 and based in Durham, NC, Pairwise is committed to delivering innovations that make food easier to grow and better to eat. For more information, visit www.pairwise.com.
###
.png)
Pairwise, a global innovator in agriculture, today announced a licensing agreement with Ball® Horticultural Company (Ball), one of the world’s leading ornamental plant breeders and distributors, granting Ball access to Pairwise’s Fulcrum® genome editing platform. The agreement includes a commercial option that would allow Ball to bring edited ornamental varieties to the global market.
Ball will integrate Fulcrum® tools into its research and development pipeline to create ornamental varieties with improved sustainability, performance, and consumer appeal. The license covers a broad range of Ball’s core crop portfolio, including roses, impatiens, petunias, hydrangeas, dianthus, begonias, and more than 40 other ornamental species. It marks the first application of Fulcrum® technology in ornamental crops, bringing precision genome editing to a multi-billion-dollar global market.
“Genome editing has the potential to reshape what’s possible in ornamental breeding,” said Jason Jandrew, Chief Research and Development Officer of Ball Horticultural Company. “We’re excited about what the intersection of our deep knowledge of genetics and traditional breeding, coupled with advanced technologies like Fulcrum®, can bring to delight our customers and serve our mission to color the world.”
“Pairwise built Fulcrum® to empower innovators across all of plant science, and Ball Horticultural Company is exactly the kind of partner we envisioned when we designed the platform for broad applicability,” said Dr. Tom Adams, CEO of Pairwise. “This agreement is a meaningful proof point that Fulcrum®’s precision and performance translate across crop systems, from staple crops to ornamental horticulture.”
The Pairwise Fulcrum® platform includes proprietary gene editing tools, enzymes, and trait libraries that enable precise genetic changes, unlocking plants’ inherent potential and significantly accelerating the development of impactful traits compared to traditional breeding methods. The licensing will cover research and commercial purposes.
About Ball® Horticultural Company
Ball Horticultural Company is a world leader in the research, breeding, production, and marketing of ornamental crops. Founded in 1905 and now in its fourth generation of family ownership, Ball operates across six continents in 20 countries, connecting breeders, growers, and retailers with award-winning plants and seeds. The company’s mission is to color the world by delivering plants that fit modern lifestyles while acting as a responsible steward of natural resources. For more information, visit www.ballhort.com.
About Pairwise
Pairwise is agriculture’s gene editing powerhouse, building a healthier world through partnership and plant innovation. Co-founded by early pioneers of CRISPR, Pairwise’s Fulcrum® Platform accelerates the development of climate-resilient, nutritious, and sustainable crops. As a trusted partner to global industry leaders and nonprofit institutions, Pairwise helps breeders move faster while transforming food and agriculture for farmers, consumers, and the planet. Founded in 2017 and based in Durham, NC, Pairwise is committed to delivering innovation that makes food easier to grow and better to eat. For more information, visit www.pairwise.com.
.png)
Durham, NC — Pairwise, a global innovator in precision breeding, today announced that CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, has signed a commercial license to Pairwise's Fulcrum® platform. The agreement is among the broadest licenses Pairwise has issued to date, covering plants, livestock, aquaculture, and microbes — putting Fulcrum's advanced gene editing capabilities directly in the hands of researchers across one of the world's largest and most diverse scientific research organizations.
CSIRO's mission spans the full breadth of Australian science and this agreement ensures that researchers have access to the Fulcrum® suite of CRISPR-based tools, including the SHARC™ enzyme, to accelerate discovery and innovation across a wide range of organisms and applications.
Dr Jason Geijskes, Trait Innovation Group Leader said CSIRO has a long history of delivering on farm impact in Australian agriculture systems through application of advanced breeding tools and technologies.
“Access to the Fulcrum® platform of precision breeding technologies will support the rapid development of traits which improve farm productivity and sustainability, and have direct benefits for consumers, across Australia and globally.”
"We are proud to announce this agreement with CSIRO, which will enable some of the world's most talented researchers to harness Fulcrum® across an extraordinary range of applications,” said Tom Adams, CEO of Pairwise. “The scope of this license is a reflection of just how versatile precision gene editing has become to address so many challenges.”
The Pairwise Fulcrum® platform includes gene editing tools, enzymes, and trait libraries that enable precise, targeted modifications across a wide range of organisms —accelerating scientific discovery and the development of solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges.
About Pairwise
Pairwise is agriculture's gene editing powerhouse, building a healthier world through partnership and plant innovation. Co-founded by the inventors of CRISPR, our Fulcrum® Platform accelerates the development of climate-resilient, nutritious, and sustainable crops. As trusted partners to global industry leaders and nonprofit institutions, we help breeders move faster while transforming food and agriculture for farmers, consumers, and the planet. Founded in 2017 and based in Durham, NC, Pairwise is committed to delivering innovation that makes food easier to grow and better to eat. For more information, visit www.pairwise.com
Pairwise today announced it has been named No. 1 on the FoodTech 500 (2025) by Forward Fooding. The annual ranking identifies the most innovative global companies at the convergence of food, technology, and sustainability, selected from over 1,200 submissions spanning 87 countries.
"The FoodTech 500 recognizes companies solving real problems in the food system, and that's precisely what Pairwise is doing. We're bringing the most powerful crop improvement tools in history to the crops and partners that need them most," said Tom Adams, CEO of Pairwise.
To read more, visit: https://forwardfooding.com/foodtech500/company/pairwise/
.png)
Pairwise today announced it has been named No. 26 on TIME Magazine’s America’s Top GreenTech Companies of 2026. The ranking recognizes the top 250 U.S.-based companies shaping the future of sustainable business and environmental innovation. Statista gathered and scrutinized data from over 3,500 companies, and awarded the top 250 based on three evaluation criteria:
Positive Environmental Impact: To assess a company’s positive environmental impact, Statista partnered with The Upright Project to quantify the holistic impact of a company’s product and service portfolio, including its alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs).
Financial Strength: For the evaluation of financial strength, Statista analyzed revenue, employee and funding data, obtained from publicly available sources like annual reports, company websites, through media monitoring, and via databases.
Innovation Drive: For the innovation drive, Statista cooperated with LexisNexis® Intellectual Property Solutions to analyze the quantity and impact of a company’s IP (intellectual property) portfolio.
"Being named to TIME's list is a meaningful recognition of what this team has built," said Tom Adams, CEO of Pairwise. "The opportunity in permanent crops is massive, and Pairwise is demonstrating what becomes possible when the best CRISPR tools, AI and machine learning, and decades of breeding knowledge converge at the same moment. We are driving a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a healthier world by making plants easier to grow and eat, and the moment to do that is now."
To read the full list, visit: https://time.com/7344228/americas-top-greentech-companies-of-2025/
.png)
“You don't notice the seeds in a blackberry until you’ve tried a seedless one,” says Tom Adams, the boss of Pairwise, a biotech company in North Carolina that is working on the first iteration of such a fruit. Gene-edited blackberries are not technically without seeds. Rather, as with seedless grapes, those seeds are so small and soft as to be unnoticeable. Late last year Pairwise announced a joint venture with a fruit-breeding company to develop stoneless cherries, following the success of conventionally bred seedless grapes, watermelons and easy-peel mandarins. It is only a matter of time until more challenging fruits are similarly eviscerated.
Over thousands of years of domestication, humans have moulded fruit to their liking. Today’s peaches are 16 times the size of their ancient ancestors. The 1,200 varieties of watermelon bear little resemblance to the pale and pip-filled gourd that preceded them. Cultivated fruits also tend to be sweeter. (So much so that some zoos have stopped feeding them to animals.) Some modern fruits, however, achieve their sweetness by lowering acidity and bitterness rather than piling in extra sugar.
.png)
Pairwise, a global innovator in agriculture, today announced a licensing agreement with Wild Bioscience Ltd. (Wild Bio) granting the company access to Pairwise’s Fulcrum® genome editing tools. Under the agreement, Wild Bio will integrate Fulcrum® tools into its research and development pipeline to design and develop more resilient crops for a changing climate.
Wild Bio applies artificial intelligence and evolutionary biology to identify and design beneficial plant traits, pairing computational discovery with commercial genetics to accelerate crop improvement. Through this collaboration, Wild Bio will leverage Pairwise’s CRISPR-based genome editing tools to translate AI-driven trait insights into elite crop varieties. The license applies to a range of row crops that Wild Bio operates across for its yield enhancement and carbon removal projects.
“At Wild Bio, our goal is to develop resilient crops for a changing planet – sustainably improving yields while reducing agricultural footprints,” said Dr. Ross Hendron, CEO of Wild Bioscience. “We focus on rapidly translating AI-driven trait discovery into elite crop genetics spanning multiple species. Pairwise’s plant-optimized genome editing approach expands our toolkit for efficiently deploying our traits across crops.”
“Pairwise built Fulcrum® to enable innovators across agriculture to realize the full potential of precision breeding,” said Dr. Tom Adams, CEO of Pairwise. “By licensing our platform to partners like Wild Bio, we are extending access to advanced editing tools that help accelerate trait development, and by extension, our mission to make a healthier world, by making plants easier to grow and eat.”
The Pairwise Fulcrum® platform includes proprietary gene editing tools, enzymes, and trait libraries that enable precise genetic changes, unlocking plants’ inherent potential and significantly accelerating the development of impactful crop traits compared to traditional breeding methods. The licensing will cover research and commercial purposes.
###
About Wild Bioscience
Wild Bioscience Ltd. is an agricultural biotechnology company applying evolutionary biology and artificial intelligence to develop resilient, high-performance crops for a changing planet. Founded in 2021 as a spin-out from the University of Oxford, the company was established by Dr. Ross Hendron and Prof. Steve Kelly and is backed by the Ellison Institute Oxford, Oxford Science Enterprises, Braavos Capital, and the University of Oxford. For more information, visit www.wildbioscience.com.
About Pairwise
Pairwise is agriculture’s gene editing powerhouse, building a healthier world through partnership and plant innovation. Co-founded by early pioneers of CRISPR, Pairwise’s Fulcrum® Platform accelerates the development of climate-resilient, nutritious, and sustainable crops. As a trusted partner to global industry leaders and nonprofit institutions, Pairwise helps breeders move faster while transforming food and agriculture for farmers, consumers, and the planet. Founded in 2017 and based in Durham, NC, Pairwise is committed to delivering innovation that makes food easier to grow and better to eat. For more information, visit www.pairwise.com.
Below is an update originally shared with our newsletter audience, capturing recent progress across Pairwise’s products, platform, and policy momentum.
Early Market Validation of Our Berry Business
This year marked an important milestone for the power of our Fulcrum® platform: the first outdoor field trials for blackberry. These trials allow us to observe performance across two distinct growing environments, the US and Colombia, and begin translating our genetics into real-world production settings. Learnings from this season will help shape the broader field program planned for the coming years.
Early observations from both sites have been incredibly encouraging. Our high-density production system has the potential to reshape economics in the caneberry category. The compact blackberry may not only reduce land use but also increase yields by 50+% based on our greenhouse trials. While still early in the outdoor field trials, the initial signals give us confidence in our path toward future commercialization and in reaching the next set of technical and commercial milestones in 2026.
This year, we hit another powerful milestone: the first commercial sale of edited blackberries in the world. In Colombia, working with a Production Partner and Retailers, the berries have been sold to consumers, who have responded positively to the fruit. Each clamshell includes a QR code that links consumers directly to information on blackberries and the technology behind them, ensuring transparency and helping introduce consumers to the benefits of innovation in fresh produce. This early market validation adds to our confidence in the significant berry opportunities ahead.
The Innovation is Real, Translational and Accelerating
One of the newest additions to our greenhouses is our seedless blackberry — a juicy, delicious berry without the tough seeds that pops in your mouth. This incredible berry represents a true game-changer for specialty crops. Again and again in the market, we’ve seen that seedlessness outperforms; people love convenient, snackable fruits.
This thesis is also a core part of the joint venture we launched with Sun World International in September, where together we’re working to create the world’s first pitless cherry. Traditionally, breeding something like this could take a century. We believe we can achieve it in a decade. (See Bloomberg article about our partnership here).
Innovation in agriculture has historically run on century-long timelines. We're demonstrating in real time that doesn't have to be the case. Our platform approach to AgTech enables the architecture of continuous innovation. When we compress breeding cycles and translate traits across crops, we open possibilities that weren't feasible in entire categories – from sustainability and disease tolerance to nutrition and yield. The sky, not the edge of the field, is the limit.
Global Adoption of Fulcrum® Platform Continues
Over the past six months, we've signed agreements with organizations that continue to validate the value of genome editing and Pairwise’s Fulcrum® platform. Each one of these is proof that our proprietary CRISPR platform is becoming an essential infrastructure. These include:
- Academic licenses signed with Kansas State, University of Wisconsin and University of Florida (UF/IFAS)
- International Rice Research Institute: Global research to support rice as a staple crop
- Mars: Research in cacao (See CNBC article here)
- Genus: Validation of our technology beyond plant applications – a first!
- Enza Zaden: A Netherlands-based global vegetable seed company that is using Fulcrum in its research, reflecting growing adoption of genome editing/NGTs in Europe (See the Packer article here)
Here is a snapshot of our current licensing footprint:
Game-Changing Policy Progress in the EU
A policy agreement was reached, paving the way for opening the European market to edited plant varieties for both cultivation and import. A final vote still needs to occur, which is expected in late Q1/early Q2 of 2026, but the policy the European Council and the European Parliament agreed upon creates a category for these plants to enter the market with no patent restrictions, food labeling, or traceability requirements. After the vote, the European Commission will embark upon writing the regulations, which is expected to take approximately 24 months. We eagerly await the opening of the European market!
This is only part of our work. Catch us at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in SF March 17-18, 2026 and find future updates of our whereabouts on LinkedIn.
Pairwise is pioneering the application of CRISPR technology in food and agriculture.
