Key takeaways:
- CRISPR-edited wheat can cut acrylamide risk by up to 93% at source, without reducing crop yield.
- Unlike conventional mutagenesis, targeted gene editing avoids the trade-off between lowering contaminants and maintaining productivity.
- With stricter EU limits on the horizon, lower-asparagine wheat could help bakery and snacks producers manage compliance more consistently.
Burnt toast warnings have been around for years, but industry has largely been left managing the problem after the fact. Now, scientists at Rothamsted Research are flipping that model, cutting acrylamide risk before wheat even reaches the mill.
Acrylamide has long been one of those stubborn risks the bakery and snacks sector manages rather than solves. It forms when everyday ingredients – wheat, potatoes, sugars – are heated, meaning it’s built into products like bread, biscuits and crisps.
New work from Rothamsted suggests that dynamic could start to shift. By using CRISPR gene editing to reduce levels of free asparagine in wheat, scientists have significantly cut the compound that drives acrylamide formation during cooking.
The Rothamsted team worked with a network of academic and industry partners, including the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology, the Technical University of Munich, the University of Reading and Curtis Analytics. Their results are based on two years of field trials – a critical step in proving the wheat performs under real farming conditions rather than controlled lab environments.
One of the edited lines reduced free asparagine by up to 93% while maintaining normal crop yields. Food safety gains without a productivity penalty are rare in staple crops, and that combination is likely to get industry attention.
Acrylamide has been under scrutiny since it was first detected in food in 2002. It’s classified as a probable carcinogen, and regulators have spent the past decade tightening expectations around its presence. The European Union (EU) already sets benchmark levels – 50 µg/kg for soft bread and up to 750 µg/kg for potato crisps – with stricter, binding limits expected. Proposals, however, aren’t likely to land before late 2026.
Benchmark levels already trigger mitigation requirements; binding limits would raise the stakes further, particularly in categories like biscuits and crisps, where acrylamide formation is harder to control. Products exceeding thresholds could face reformulation pressure or, in some cases, restrictions.
So far, industry’s response has focused largely on processing: adjusting bake times, tweaking recipes, applying enzymes such as asparaginase. These approaches help, but they don’t address the root cause. As long as raw materials contain asparagine, there’s always the potential for acrylamide to form – whether in a loaf of bread or a batch of fried snacks.
That’s the gap this research is aiming to close.
A change that carries through the chain
The Rothamsted team focused on a gene known as TaASN2, which plays a central role in asparagine production in wheat grain. In some lines, this was paired with a partial knockout of a related gene, TaASN1, allowing researchers to push reductions further.
These targeted edits reduced free asparagine in harvested grain by 59%, and by up to 93% in the dual-edited lines – all without affecting yield.
The effect didn’t stop at harvest and carried through into finished products. Bread and biscuits made from the wheat showed sharply lower acrylamide levels, with some toasted samples falling below detectable limits. While the trials focused on wheat-based foods, the implications extend further. In snacks, where high-temperature frying drives both flavour and acrylamide formation, the same principle applies: lower precursor in, lower risk out.
“This work demonstrates the power of CRISPR technology to deliver precise, beneficial changes in crop genetics,” said Dr Navneet Kaur, lead researcher at Rothamsted Research. “With supportive regulatory frameworks, we can unlock significant benefits for agriculture and food systems.”
Reducing variability is part of the appeal. Acrylamide levels can vary depending on raw material composition, meaning processors often have to adjust conditions to stay within recommended limits. Starting with wheat that contains less of the key precursor helps narrow that range.
There’s also a scale effect. Wheat is one of the world’s most widely grown crops, with global production exceeding 780 million tonnes annually. Even relatively small changes in composition can influence the safety profile of everyday foods, particularly in Europe, where wheat-based products and cereal-based snacks remain dietary staples.
Precision beats the old-school approach
Alongside the CRISPR work, researchers also tested wheat developed using TILLING, a conventional mutagenesis approach. While it reduced asparagine levels by around 50%, yields dropped by close to 25%.
That yield hit likely reflects unintended mutations elsewhere in the genome – a trade-off most growers would struggle to justify.
CRISPR avoids that issue by targeting specific genes, allowing researchers to reduce asparagine without disrupting plant performance.
Prof Nigel Halford, who led the project, said the implications extend beyond plant science. “Low acrylamide wheat could enable food businesses to meet evolving safety standards without compromising product quality or incurring major production costs,” he noted. “It also offers a meaningful opportunity to reduce the dietary exposure of consumers to acrylamide.”
That balance is key. Reducing acrylamide has often meant trade-offs – whether in flavour, texture or efficiency. This is particularly true in fried snacks, where colour, crunch and taste are tightly linked to cooking conditions. A raw material that lowers risk without forcing additional changes could ease some of those constraints.
Regulation will shape what happens next
In Europe, acrylamide benchmark levels already apply to products including bread, biscuits, breakfast cereals and potato crisps, with new maximum limits expected to tighten compliance further.
That raises the stakes, particularly across multi-market supply chains where raw material variability, seasonal differences and processing conditions can all affect acrylamide formation.
Wheat with inherently lower asparagine levels could help smooth some of that variability. It doesn’t remove the need for process controls, but it reduces reliance on them. For snacks producers balancing frying temperatures, colour targets and throughput, that could offer some additional headroom.
However, translating scientific progress into commercial reality may not be straightforward. Gene-edited crops remain tightly regulated in the EU, and ongoing UK–EU negotiations could shape how quickly technologies like this reach the market. While the UK has moved to create a more permissive pathway for precision-bred crops, divergence between regulatory systems could complicate adoption for manufacturers supplying both markets.
That creates a potential bottleneck for adoption. A crop designed to help meet stricter safety standards may still face barriers to market access, depending on how gene editing’s treated in future trade and regulatory agreements.
Consumer perception adds another layer. While gene editing is often positioned as more precise than traditional genetic modification, acceptance varies across regions and product categories. For brands with a strong natural or clean-label positioning, the optics will need careful handling.
Even so, expectations around acrylamide are tightening, and many of the simpler mitigation steps have already been taken. What this research offers is a reset. Instead of relying entirely on what happens in the oven or fryer, it shifts part of the solution back to the field.
After years of managing acrylamide in the oven and fryer, the real fix may start in the field.
An accidental discovery
Acrylamide’s link to food wasn’t uncovered in a lab, but through an environmental investigation. The first clues emerged during a tunnel construction project in southern Sweden in the 1990s.
A sealing agent used in the tunnel released acrylamide into nearby water sources, leading to reports of livestock falling ill. When researchers examined exposure levels, they found elevated concentrations not only in workers on site, but also in individuals with no direct connection to the project.
That unexpected result shifted attention toward everyday exposure. Food quickly became the focus. Early assumptions pointed to meat, but testing instead revealed significant levels in fried potatoes, as well as coffee.
It's now understood that acrylamide forms in carbohydrate-rich foods when they are heated above 120°C – typically during frying, roasting or baking.
Study:
N Kaur, S Raffan, J Clark, et al. 2026. Field Trials and Baking Studies of Ultra-Low Asparagine, Genome Edited (CRISPR/Cas9) and Mutant (TILLING) Wheat. Plant Biotechnology Journal 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.70661.
