From Mendel’s peas to Tropic’s bananas – how genetics became a key pillar of agriculture and horticulture innovation

This month we’re reflecting on a lot of strands (not all of them DNA!) which have got us thinking about the role of genetics in agriculture.

The recent death of DNA pioneer James Watson came a week before the UK’s Genetic Technologies (Precision Breeding) Act legislation comes into force, neatly bookending many decades of research and implementation of molecular tools for farmers and growers.

Let’s start at the very beginning

Around 50 years after Austrian monk Gregor Mendel had carried out his famous pea crossing experiments in the 1860s (revealing inheritance from two parent plants), William Bateson, the first Director of the John Innes Centre, coined the term “genetics.”

Fast forward another 50 years or so and the structure of the iconic DNA double helix was solved – famously by James Watson and Francis Crick – and less famously by the unsung heroine of the time, Rosalind Franklin (who generated some crucial data used by Watson and Crick).

Between them they unravelled the mystery of how inherited traits were passed on and paved the way for modern molecular biology.

If ‘genetics’ can be thought of as “nature’s way of keeping a record of what works,” scientists could finally understand how that record of “what works” is encoded into the DNA strands and passed down through generations – with a few changes on the way.

From modifying to editing

Being able to transfer genes from one species to another, initially in bacteria and then in plants, opened the door to genetic modification (GM), a technology that was initially used to make GM tomato paste. Clearly labelled as such, this was available in two UK supermarkets in the late 1990s, then later withdrawn due to negative consumer perceptions.

More than 25 years passed – and genetic tools became ever more sophisticated, to the point where DNA can now be “edited” very precisely, and used to replicate mutation events that can happen randomly in Nature, but very specifically and in a highly controlled way.

The regulation catches up… in places – TODAY!

Experimentation in genetics has been surrounded by a raft of regulation, not least when it comes to release of the products of such interventions into the environment or the food chain.

In 2023 a UK Act of Parliament created a new legal category called “precision-bred organisms” (PBOs) — organisms whose genetic changes could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding but were made using modern gene-editing tools.

Spring 2025 saw secondary legislation introduced which brought that Act to life – defining processes for release, marketing, food/feed authorisations, and public registration of gene-edited plants. Crucially, the implementation at present is just for plants and only applied in England. The Devolved Administrations (and indeed Europe) are still to rule on this.

Under WTO rules, any new regulations that could affect trade have to go through a 6-month “implementation period” before being fully enacted. At the time of writing, the 6 months expires today (14^th November), opening up new market opportunities for farmers, breeders and the food industry.

So, what next?

The door is now open – ajar – for companies such as Tropic (who featured in one of the Agri-TechE Week 2025 events) to commercialise their gene-edited products (non-browning bananas in Tropic’s case), as well as a host of new, improved material to be developed, trialled and adopted.

Such is the forensic precision with which the genetic basis of so many plant and animal traits is now understood. Minute, detailed changes can be made to DNA to help introduce disease resistance, increase stress tolerance and other valuable traits into crops and potentially livestock.

Genetics is truly one of the key pillars of agriculture and horticulture innovation… and it just got some regulatory reinforcements.