IITA working on Africa’s first genome edited banana

The new frontier for agricultural innovation is genome editing and IITA is already leading the way by using the technology to improve several crops. Principal Scientist and Deputy Director of IITA East Africa Hub, Dr Leena Tripathi revealed this during the Third Africa Biennial Biosciences Communication Symposium (ABBC), which took place in Pretoria South Africa, 29-30 August.
Tripathi said, “We are using genome editing to develop disease resistant banana and plantain. Plantain will be resistant to Brown Streak Virus (BSV) and will benefit Nigerian farmers who grow the crop widely.” Other crops that are being improved using genome editing are cooking and dessert bananas.
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