The world's favourite fruit is in serious trouble. Panama Disease Tropical Race 4, a fungal pathogen that travels in soil and water and leaves no cure in its wake, has now been confirmed in more than 20 countries.
It threatens, in the starkest terms, the near-total collapse of the global Cavendish banana, the single variety that accounts for over 90% of the export market and underpins a $25 billion industry that supports 400 million people.
The Cavendish survived its last existential crisis, in the 1950s, only by replacing its predecessor. There is currently nowhere left to go.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
Against that backdrop, Tropic, a Norwich-based gene-editing company, has raised $105 million (approximately €91 million) in an oversubscribed Series C, co-led by Forbion through its Bioeconomy Fund and Corteva, via its Corteva Catalyst investment platform.
Significant participation came from Just Climate and IQ Capital, alongside new investors ABN Amro and Invest International. Existing backers Temasek, Five Seasons Ventures, Aliment Capital, Sucden Ventures, Genoa Ventures, and Polaris Partners also joined the round.
The company was founded in late 2016 at the Norwich Research Park by Gilad Gershon, an agritech investor and former Israeli Navy ship commander, and Dr Eyal Maori, a virologist and RNA biologist whose earlier work formed the scientific basis for Beeologics, an agricultural genetics startup later acquired by Monsanto.
Together they built out a platform using CRISPR gene editing and Tropic's own proprietary technology, Gene Editing Induced Gene Silencing, or GEiGS, to make targeted modifications to tropical crops without introducing foreign DNA.
The milestone that drove this round happened in 2025: Tropic commercially launched two new banana varieties, the first to reach market in more than 75 years. The first is a non-browning banana, developed by disabling the gene that produces polyphenol oxidase, the enzyme responsible for the brown discolouration that begins within minutes of cutting.
The second is an extended shelf-life variety, which lengthens the banana's green life by an additional 12 days by targeting the genes responsible for ethylene production, the plant hormone that triggers ripening. Tropic says this reduces transportation waste by up to 50 per cent. The non-browning variety was named one of TIME Magazine's Best Inventions of 2025.
Gershon said demand is already outpacing what the company can produce.
Regulatory approvals for the bananas are in place in the Philippines, Colombia, Honduras, the US, and Canada. Consumer launches in the US and Canada are planned for 2026. The technology is described by Tropic as non-GMO, as it makes targeted changes to the banana's existing DNA without introducing genetic material from another organism.
The more urgent project, however, is TR4. Tropic is deploying its GEiGS technology to redirect the banana plant's own RNA interference machinery to attack the fungal genes responsible for the disease. In 2025, the company shipped plants to establish a mother plantation, the first stage of production at commercial scale, with deployment of TR4-resistant varieties targeted for 2027.
The $25 billion banana industry figure for TR4's potential impact comes from Tropic's own framing; the existential scale of the threat is corroborated by extensive independent reporting.
The Series C capital will fund expanded plant production infrastructure, support commercial partnerships across export markets, and accelerate Tropic's broader pipeline, including resistance to Black Sigatoka, a fungal disease that currently costs farmers between $2,000 and $3,000 per hectare annually in pesticide treatment, and the company's rice programme.
Tropic has also licensed its GEiGS technology to a set of third parties, including Corteva for disease resistance traits in corn and soybean, British Sugar for disease-resistant sugar beet, and animal genetics company Genus. The licensing track suggests the underlying technology has commercial reach well beyond tropical fruits.
Joy Faucher, General Partner at Forbion, who will join Tropic's board alongside Tom Greene of Corteva and Siddarth Shrikanth of Just Climate, framed the investment in terms of broader planetary health.
For Corteva, whose Senior Director Tom Greene also joins the board, the appeal sits partly in the consumer-facing dimension.
Tropic's total pre-Series C funding stood at approximately $73.5 million, comprising a $10 million Series A in 2018 led by Pontifax AgTech and Five Seasons Ventures, a $28.5 million Series B in 2020 led by Temasek, and a $35 million Series C in 2022 led by Blue Horizon. The new $105 million round, its second to carry the Series C designation, reflects a significant step-change in scale.
The commercial challenge now is less scientific than logistical. Gene editing the world's most widely grown export banana is one thing. Producing it at a scale capable of supplying meaningful volumes across global export markets, while simultaneously developing disease-resistant varieties against a pathogen with no known cure, is another order of magnitude entirely. What this round is funding, in large part, is the answer to that second question.