• Several biotech companies are developing gene-edited strawberries engineered for longer durability, shelf life and improved flavor. None have reached the commercial food supply.
• The genetics make it complicated. Strawberries' complex genomes make traditional breeding slow and unpredictable. The industry sees gene editing as an attractive alternative; skeptics are concerned about technical risks.
• Regulations lag behind. Gene-edited crops can reach market without consistent labeling, and the industry's habit of describing new GMOs made with techniques like CRISPR as "non-GMO" adds to the confusion.
• The deeper question: What are we optimizing for? The most commonly targeted traits via gene editing, include greater durability and longer shelf life — the same priorities that gave us year-round access to flavorless strawberries in the first place. New tools don't guarantee better outcomes if the underlying goals don't change.

The experience of eating a good strawberry is irreplaceable. Ripe fruit bursts on the tongue in an explosion of sweetness and tartness. For many, the taste and scent of a strawberry takes us right back to the early summer of our childhood, to a time when eating a fresh, local strawberry meant that the freedom of summer vacation was right around the corner. 

Behind this beloved fruit is a complicated commercial reality. The strawberry's accessibility is limited by its delicacy, narrow harvest window and short shelf life. The plant's genetics are, if anything, more complicated — as we'll see.

The biotech industry has been watching this tension, too, and sees an opening. We're monitoring several GMO strawberry developments, and while none have reached your grocery store yet, what's happening in the lab and greenhouse is worth understanding now.

A history of sweetness

Wild strawberries grow in many locations and climates around the world. The fruit has been gathered and consumed since ancient times, as well as gaining popularity as an ornamental. The modern strawberry was developed by accident, in France in the 18th century, when a Chilean plant brought back from South America cross-pollinated with a Virginian strawberry brought from North America. From that hybrid, English breeders developed Fragaria × ananassa, which is the ancestor of virtually every commercial strawberry we eat today.

Good strawberries pack a nutritional punch, providing fiber, key vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Eating them can improve blood sugar, promote digestive health, help prevent cancer and support a healthy heart. In the US, they are the fifth most-consumed fruit. Crucially, they are an item for which shoppers willingly pay an organic premium, in response to their position on the Environmental Working Group's Dirty Dozen list which tracks produce that carries pesticide residue. EWG asserts that conventionally-grown strawberries are the most likely produce item to carry pesticide residue.

For farmers, strawberries can provide crucial early season income, though crop loss due to fungal pathogens like Botrytis, short harvest window and labor-intensive harvest process compromise those benefits. The pesticides applied to conventionally grown strawberries are not only expensive, they also pose risks to farmers, farm workers and people living nearby.

"Octoploidy" is not a James Bond movie

You are a diploid. 

This is not an insult — all humans are diploids. We inherit a set of chromosomes from each parent, making for two complete sets ("di" means two, "ploidy" refers to sets of chromosomes). 

Compared to strawberries, our genomes are basic. 

Most modern cultivated strawberries are octoploid: they carry eight sets of chromosomes, the accumulated legacy of ancient hybridization events between four distinct wild ancestors. Eight chromosome sets complicate the principles and practice of strawberry propagation. In principle, strawberries can reproduce sexually just like many other plants — through flowers, pollinators and seed. But, with so many chromosomes in the mix, the results of breeding from seed are unpredictable in the extreme. Out of thousands of plants grown from seed, a breeder may find only a handful with usable traits, if any at all. That is why in practice, strawberries are propagated through runners — vines grow out of an established plant to generate a new plant that is genetically identical to the parent. These clones are entirely predictable for the breeder, but costly to transport and replant. And cloning preserves what you have, it doesn't introduce anything new. For breeders who want to improve the strawberry rather than just reproduce it, the octoploid genome has always been the obstacle. For GMO developers, gene editing tools like CRISPR look like a way around it.

CRISPR is a popular gene editing technology that we are seeing more frequently over the past few years. It is often described as "genetic scissors," and works by cutting through both strands of DNA to potentially allow the addition or removal of a portion of DNA. CRISPR is often lauded for its precision because GMO developers can choose the site where the cut occurs — up to a point. In theory, the developers choose the site; in practice, the scissors can make cuts away from the target site, or the gene editing process can cause mutations in the DNA. But, there's a strawberry paradox: The very complexity that makes traditional breeding so difficult and gene editing so appealing also makes it more technically demanding than it might be in simpler organisms. CRISPR works like a find-and-replace function in word processing: you instruct it to find a specific sequence of genetic letters and make a cut there. The problem is that a genome with eight near-duplicate chromosome sets is a document full of words that look almost like the one you're trying to change. Even if the scissors are precise, a polyploidal genome provides more opportunities to cut in the wrong place than a simpler genome would. The rate, extent and long term implications of off-target effects are, some researchers believe, underreported and understudied.

The GMO strawberries

Here's what we know, and what we're still watching. These developments are listed in order of announcement, spanning a product already on the market to university-level research that has yet to be monetized.

• There is one GMO strawberry on the market though not in the food supply. It was announced in Japan in 2013 as a collaboration between the Hokkaido Center of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and agrochemical distributor Hokusan to develop a genetically modified strawberry as a veterinary pharmaceutical. The strawberry expresses a protein from a canine gene, modified canine interferon alpha-4, which is processed and freeze-dried into a powder for use as a topical treatment for gingivitis in animals. The finished product, called Interberry α, is on the market in Japan. 
• In 2018, Pairwise partnered with Monsanto to produce gene edited berries with increased sweetness and longer shelf life. Monsanto was acquired by Bayer in 2018, and there has been no public update on the project since.
• In 2021, J.R. Simplot Company and Plant Science Inc. joined forces with the goal of bringing the first genetically modified strawberry to market, using CRISPR to extend strawberries' growing season, reduce waste and improve shelf life. J.R. Simplot is a multinational company that previously brought genetically engineered potatoes to market; Plant Science Inc has spent 35 years using traditional breeding and selection to develop strawberries which grow in different regions and climates — which will provide the raw material to develop gene edited strawberries with the characteristics they want. As of this writing, no product has reached market and the companies have not issued public updates on their timeline.
• In 2024, Dutch biotech company Hudson River Biotechnology announced the successful regeneration of a strawberry plant from a single gene-edited cell using their proprietary TiGER workflow. The company says TiGER allows developers to edit genes without introducing foreign DNA and ensures that edits are expressed consistently throughout the plant. The workflow is reportedly being used to develop strawberries with resistance to fungal infection, a common and costly cause of crop loss.
• Earlier this year, researchers from the University of Florida, Kongju National University, Chungbuk National University and the National Institute of Horticultural and Herbal Science of Korea announced the development of a white-fleshed strawberry. The team used CRISPR to knock out the color-producing gene in the commercially grown "Florida Brilliance" cultivar. It's unclear whether this work could lead to a commercially-available GMO white-fleshed strawberry in the future, or if the exploration of gene editing in polyploidal crops could be developed to impact other traits. Naturally-occurring white fleshed strawberries are already found in the wild and cultivars that produce white strawberries are commercially available.
• Biotech company Ohalo is taking a different approach by intervening in how strawberries are propagated. Conventional propagation depends on runners because breeding from seed is unpredictable with such a complex genome. Ohalo's "Boosted Breeding" system suppresses the mechanism that normally delivers only half the genes from each parent, so offspring inherit the complete genome from both parents. The company says the boosted seed produces uniform seed that could replace runner propagation. In 2025, Ohalo formed the Ohalo Strawberry Consortium with California strawberry producers, with the stated goal of bringing "consumer-preferred, more flavorful strawberries" to market.

What does this mean for your summer fruit experience?

Because the only strawberry in the global supply chain engineered for commercial use is processed into a powder to treat gingivitis in dogs and cats, we feel confident you aren't going to encounter one at your local grocery store, farm stand, or u-pick anytime soon. Our researchers will keep you posted if that changes.

So why are we paying attention to strawberries that aren't even on the market yet?

First, the produce aisle is changing. The GM strawberries currently in development are part of a broader biotech interest in fresh produce — an area of the grocery store that used to be largely free from GMOs. Today, you might find Pinkglow Pineapples, Arctic Apples, Innate Potatoes or bioengineered sweet corn — all GMOs — among the fresh fruit and veg. That's a shift worth paying attention to (check out our Pocket Guide to GMOs in Produce for more information).

Our concerns, as always, center on transparency and informed choice. Right now, the regulatory framework governing gene edited crops offers neither.

In the US, the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard defines BE foods as those containing detectable genetic material modified through laboratory techniques in ways that couldn't occur through conventional breeding. In practice, the standard is applied inconsistently: some gene-edited crops that don't meet that threshold appear on the BE list, while others don't. Meanwhile, the industry continues to introduce new terminology — new breeding techniques, new genomic techniques, precision breeding — that complicates public understanding, as well as any attempt to draw a clear regulatory line.

That inconsistency has consequences beyond the label. 

Organic certification depends on clear and consistent definitions, and on supply chains transparent enough for farmers to verify that the seed they're buying is non-GMO. Moving goalposts don't just confuse shoppers — they create openings for genetic modification to enter supply chains where it doesn't belong.

The industry's own messaging doesn't reassure us. Some of the statements coming from the biotech companies working in this space gives us pause. For example, one R&D director at J.R. Simplot acknowledged that while the strawberry genetic code has been mapped, it's not clear what traits are associated with which parts of the code. The company is working with the parts that are known. That's a candid admission worth sitting with: gene editing is being applied to a genome that its own developers don't fully understand. 

Hudson River Biotechnology's website describes their breakthrough as aligning with "a broader vision in which all crops can benefit from CRISPR technology." All crops. It's a vision worth examining. Applying CRISPR to all crops is a sweeping ambition, and one with significant implications for farming, seed saving and supply chains — and for eaters who prefer their food without genetic modification.

Ohalo is describing its gene-edited strawberry seed as non-GMO. That characterization conflicts with the internationally accepted definition of a living modified organism established under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety — the same definition on which the Non-GMO Project Standard's definition of GMO is based.  We have long argued that limiting the definition of GMO to transgenic organisms alone misrepresents the science and leaves consumers without the information they need to make informed choices.And at the largest scale, there's the question of who controls the seed. Since the 1980s, more than half the global seed supply has been shifted into the private ownership of a handful of corporations, with GMOs driving the push to patent seed. As gene editing and other new GMO techniques become faster, cheaper and more accessible to GMO developers, will the seed takeover be complete? If Hudson River Biotechnology's vision is realized — if all crops become candidates for gene editing — the question of who owns those traits, technologies and patents, and who controls the seed becomes urgent. We'd like to ask those questions before the strawberries arrive.

The philosophical strawberry

The strawberry is a telling symbol for a much larger debate. 

As we've seen, the traits most commonly targeted by gene editing aim to reduce food waste and increase durability — goals that sound reasonable until you remember that year-round fresh strawberries bred to withstand harvest and transport are how we ended up with lousy strawberries at the grocery store in the first place. You know the ones — big and shiny and red on the outside, sad and tasteless within. An affront to proper strawberries, and a crime against taste buds everywhere.

That's what happens when the food industry prioritizes yield, durability and shelf life at the expense of flavor and nutrient density. Adopting new tools to make the same mistakes, but faster, is not what progress looks like.

There's a simpler question here that the industry doesn't often ask: does everything need to be available all over, all the time? The best strawberries are fleeting things — connected to a specific place and a moment that passes. That is what makes the experience irreplaceable. A strawberry that can survive a two-week supply chain and look perfect in February is a different thing entirely — and no amount of gene editing will close that gap.

FAQ

The Non-GMO Project’s Standard defines all crops and products developed using biotechnology, including new gene-editing techniques, as GMOs. We share this information to further one of the Project’s primary goals of creating greater transparency in the supply chain, ensuring you have the information you need to make the best choices for you, your brand, and your family. 

Please note that the information herein is for general informational purposes only and is based on the linked sources above.

The Non-GMO Project is a 510c3 nonprofit dedicated to protecting and promoting non-GMO alternatives. New GMO Alerts is supported by funding from readers like you. Donate today.