“YOU DON’T notice the seeds in a blackberry until you’ve tried a seedless one,” says Tom Adams, the boss of Pairwise, a biotech company in North Carolina that is working on the first iteration of such a fruit. Gene-edited blackberries are not technically without seeds. Rather, as with seedless grapes, those seeds are so small and soft as to be unnoticeable. Late last year Pairwise announced a joint venture with a fruit-breeding company to develop stoneless cherries, following the success of conventionally bred seedless grapes, watermelons and easy-peel mandarins. It is only a matter of time until more challenging fruits are similarly eviscerated.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Until the pips squeak ”
From the March 7th 2026 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents