Mars and Pairwise have partnered to combat the continuing global cocoa crisis by leveraging the latter brand’s gene-editing technology. The partnership will see Mars utilizing the CRISPR technology from Pairwise, which is a gene-editing tool to precisely alter the DNA sequences of cocoa plants to help them become more resilient in the face of challenging environmental conditions. The partnership could support the development of cocoa plant varieties that are capable of withstanding adverse conditions they wouldn’t otherwise be able to tolerate.

The Mars and Pairwise partnership could help to greatly reduce the amount of time to breed resilient plant varieties, which traditionally takes decades and can be unpredictable in terms of results. The announcement comes as an important time when regulations surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are in flux, particularly in the European Union.