Sun World International and Pairwise collaborate to develop new specialty fruits

We have seedless watermelons, lemons, and grapes on the market. But no pitless cherries. Well, fruit variety developer Sun World announced its partnership with gene-editing company Pairwise to create new fruit varieties, and one of them will be a pitless cherry.

In a press release announcing the collaboration, Bernardo Calvo, Sun World’s CEO, said the development of a pitless cherry is a "natural innovation evolution" for the company, whose core goal is to introduce "superior" eating products that "optimize convenience." 

"In Pairwise, we’ve found an extraordinary partner already well down this quite complex path,” the CEO added. 

Pairwise, the developer of the world’s first seedless blackberry, will lead all research and development efforts in the new collaboration. This includes its toolkit platform, Fulcrum®, full of gene editing tools, artificial intelligence, and a library of genetic traits and expertise.

Sun World will have exclusive commercial rights to the genetics created in the partnership, make all strategic investments, and contribute germplasm, breeding infrastructure, and commercial market access to support the project. 

The company added that the partnership is already working on the development of the fruit, and the collaboration "may explore additional strategic partnerships" in the future.

"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."

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