https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/06/1228868005/purple-tomato-gmo-gardeners

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A genetically modified purple tomato can now be raised by home
gardeners : Shots - Health News The plant gets its color -- and a
boost in antioxidants -- from genes from an edible flower. It's the
first time gardeners have been able to grow a GMO crop at home.
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Your Health

Gardeners can now grow a genetically modified purple tomato made with
snapdragon DNA

February 6, 20245:00 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition

FromBSPR News

By 

Sasa Woodruff

Gardeners can now grow a genetically modified purple tomato made with
snapdragon DNA

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[purpletoma]
Enlarge this image

The Purple Tomato, a genetically modified crop created by Norfolk
Plant Sciences, is available to home gardeners to start from seed.
Raven Villar/Boise State Public Radio hide caption

toggle caption
Raven Villar/Boise State Public Radio

The Purple Tomato, a genetically modified crop created by Norfolk
Plant Sciences, is available to home gardeners to start from seed.

Raven Villar/Boise State Public Radio

As home gardeners in the U.S. page through seed catalogs and pick out
their favorite heirlooms, there's a new seed that has never been
available to them before: a tomato the color of a concord grape with
plum-colored flesh. It looks otherworldly, maybe Photoshopped. But
it's not.

This nightshade is purple because its creators at Norfolk Plant
Sciences worked for about 20 years to hack color genes from a
snapdragon flower into the plant. The genes not only provide pigment,
but high levels of anthocyanin, a health-promoting compound.

This dusky fruit, named the Purple Tomato, is the first genetically
modified food crop to be directly marketed to home gardeners - the
seeds went on sale Saturday. Last year, a handful of small farmers
started growing and selling the tomatoes, but until now, genetically
modified foods were generally only available to commercial producers
in the U.S.

By selling direct to gardeners, Norfolk hopes to get Americans to
change their perceptions of GMO foods. A 2020 Pew Research study
showed that most Americans see GMOs as worse for their health than a
food that has no genetic modification and just 7% see them as
healthier than other foods.

"We aim to show with this product and with this company that there's
a lot of benefits that can go to consumers through biotechnology,
better taste, better nutrition as prime examples," says Nathan
Pumplin, CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce, a subsidiary of Norfolk
Plant Sciences.

A disease-fighting tomato

The leading scientist behind the Purple Tomato is Cathie Martin, a
biochemist who trained at the University of Cambridge. About 20 years
ago, she set out to create a transgenic tomato, using DNA from
another unrelated organism, in this case, a purple snapdragon, which
is an edible flower.

[professor_]
Enlarge this image

Cathie Martin worked for years to develop the Purple Tomato using
genes from the edible snapdragon plant to increase anthocyanin, a
compound that gives a purplish hue to plants. John Innes Centre/
Norfolk Plant Sciences hide caption

toggle caption
John Innes Centre/Norfolk Plant Sciences

Cathie Martin worked for years to develop the Purple Tomato using
genes from the edible snapdragon plant to increase anthocyanin, a
compound that gives a purplish hue to plants.

John Innes Centre/Norfolk Plant Sciences

The goal was to develop a tomato with high levels of anthocyanins,
the compounds that give blueberries and blackberries, eggplant and
purple cabbage their color and their status as superfoods.

Anthocyanins have been shown to have anti-cancer and
anti-inflammatory effects. They're antioxidants, which can help
neutralize unstable molecules in the body that can damage healthy
cells and are linked with aging and disease.

"It's normal for tomatoes to make these healthy antioxidants. They
typically don't make them very much in the fruit, though," Pumplin
says, explaining that they normally appear in the stems and leaves.
"So what Cathie [Martin] did was put the on switch into tomato."

She started with the basic technique that scientists figured out in
the 1980s using a bacteria to naturally insert its DNA into host
organisms.

GMO is out, 'bioengineered' is in, as new U.S. food labeling rules
take effect

Food

GMO is out, 'bioengineered' is in, as new U.S. food labeling rules
take effect

It's a process that can happen naturally. For example, sweet potatoes
have the DNA of an agrobacterium and can technically be considered
transgenic, an plant that contains genetic material of two different
organisms.

Martin isolated the gene in the snapdragon flower that turned on and
off the purple color. Next she took the gene and inserted it into the
bacteria. The tomato could then take in the foreign genetic material
and express this new gene.

"It really is a great example of understanding how the natural world
functions and building on that to meet our needs," Pumplin explains.

The result? Norfolk's purple tomato has, per weight, as much
anthocyanin as a blueberry or eggplant, Pumplin says. And Americans
eat more tomatoes annually, so it makes the nutritional benefits more
accessible.

In a research published in Nature, Martin found that mice who ate a
diet supplemented with purple tomatoes lived 30% longer than those
who didn't.

[purple-tom]
Enlarge this image

The Purple Tomato has deep purple flesh. Traditional breeders have
grown tomatoes with purple skin before but not with this tone in the
flesh. Raven Villar/Boise State Public Radio hide caption

toggle caption
Raven Villar/Boise State Public Radio

The Purple Tomato has deep purple flesh. Traditional breeders have
grown tomatoes with purple skin before but not with this tone in the
flesh.

Raven Villar/Boise State Public Radio

A new wave in GMO foods

The push for nutrient-dense GMOs is a recent trend, says Kathleen
Hefferon, a microbiologist at Cornell University. The first wave of
GMOs were for staple crops that were easier to grow.

"There was a real push of trying to achieve food security for a lot
of populaces in developing countries and usually that involved making
these staple crops that grew better, such as rice and corn and wheat
and things like this," she explained.

A transgenic papaya was introduced to combat a virus that was
destroying the crops in Hawaii. It's largely credited with saving the
industry on the islands. There were also crops to increase
nutritional value for populations in developing countries. Golden
rice was developed in the late 1990s to have more beta-carotene to
combat Vitamin A deficiencies. Because of practical and regulatory
issues, the crop never took off.

The trend now is for biofortified foods, like the Purple Tomato.

"People have interest in their quality of life, for longevity and
things like this. I think there has been just a health trend in that
regard and it's going to continue," Hefferon says.

Along the same lines, California-based food company Fresh Del Monte
created a pink pineapple in 2020. Its rosy flesh comes from a high
level of lycopene, an antioxidant that gives peaches, tomatoes and
watermelon their rosy hues.

But unlike the Purple Tomato, which the company is making widely
available to both farmers and consumers, only Fresh Del Monte can
grow it.

[img_1147-e]
Enlarge this image

Purple Tomatoes ripening in the Norfolk Plant Sciences test garden.
Norfolk Plant Sciences hide caption

toggle caption
Norfolk Plant Sciences

Purple Tomatoes ripening in the Norfolk Plant Sciences test garden.

Norfolk Plant Sciences

Traditional breeding vs. GMOs

Genetic modification in the lab isn't the only way to supercharge
foods with nutrients, notes Jim Myers, a professor specializing in
vegetable breeding at Oregon State University. He says in fact,
traditional breeders were the first to release a tomato to the public
with boosted levels of anthocyanins.

More than two decades ago Myers began using traditional plant
breeding to cross genes from wild tomatoes with modern varieties.

The modern domesticated tomato originated from an 80,000 years old
species from Ecuador. There are about 10,000 varieties of Solanum
lycopersicum, which vary from marigold orange to celery green to
khaki maroon

Domesticated tomatoes have anthocyanins only in the plant, but Myers
says their wild relatives have them in the fruit.

He crossed Solanum cheesmaniae from the Galapagos and Solanum
chilense from South America with a domesticated variety to ultimately
create the Indigo collection of tomatoes.

In 2011, they released the 'Indigo Rose,' which has a deep blue skin
and a pinkish inside when ripe, and more anthocyanin.

His first version of the tomato wasn't perfect, he says - the taste
wasn't great and it took a long time to ripen, but subsequent
breeding has improved on it, and gardeners can buy it and grow it
themselves.

"I don't know if supercharging is the right word, but we're
definitely enhancing their potential to provide benefits to human
health," Myers says of the series, which now includes varieties like
'Indigo Cherry Drops', Indigo Pear Drops' 'Indigo Kiwi' and 'Midnight
Roma'.

As Biotech Crops Lose Their Power, Scientists Push For New
Restrictions

Science

As Biotech Crops Lose Their Power, Scientists Push For New
Restrictions

Myers points out that he and the creator of the Purple Tomato began
working on these tomatoes at about the same time and there are now
more than 50 cultivars of the Indigos being grown and bred throughout
the world, including small farms and big companies.

"There's just all this diversity in the Indigo market class that has
come about through conventional breeding," he says. "With the GMO
tomato, it's taken them all this time and more to get one variety out
there."

He also thinks the Purple Tomato could face a battle for acceptance
that the Indigos don't, given negative perceptions of GMOs.

"There's going to be this cognitive dissonance for some people in
that here is a tomato that has these potential health benefits ...
contrasting with the origins, which was through genetic engineering."

[purple-tom]
Enlarge this image

A caprese salad prepared with Purple Tomato. Norfolk Plant Sciences 
hide caption

toggle caption
Norfolk Plant Sciences

A caprese salad prepared with Purple Tomato.

Norfolk Plant Sciences

A new chapter in the GMO debate?

Some of the earliest GM crops were corn and soybeans modified to
tolerate herbicides like glyphosate, known commercially as Roundup.
In 2023, the USDA reports 91% of domestic corn acres used herbicide
tolerant seeds.

Mark Lynas, author of Seeds of Science: Why We Got It So Wrong On
GMOs says the abundance of chemical-tolerant plants has harmed the
acceptance of this technology.

"It enabled people who were concerned about the technology to really
draw the conclusion that this was all about increasing agrochemical
use, and the capture of the seeds in the food chain by big
multinational corporations," he says.

Lynas says it was a blow to their adoption because the industry could
have focused on genetic modifications that would actually use less
herbicide.

"GMO technology could have already transformed world agriculture in a
vastly more sustainable direction," he says.

The Purple Tomato's creators hope its release to gardeners could
change the conversation. Lynas called Norfolk's marketing to
consumers a "stroke of genius" that could demystify the technology.

"Stop just doing the GMO stuff with these big corporate, commodity
cash crops and do something ordinary people can have in their hands,"
he says. "You'll see, actually it's just a seed which is going to
produce a purple fruit, which is probably healthier for you."

Of course, some people have raised health concerns around eating
GMOs, but studies since these foods were introduced three decades ago
do not show any harm. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration concludes
there is not a health risk to eating GM foods currently on the
market.

Lynas says GMOs could be used to improve the environment, and
livelihoods of people around the globe.

"If we focus on that, then we can make sure that these
biotechnologies actually have outcomes and applications which are
better for the planet and better for people overall. And that's the
way that science should be used," Lynas says.

Pumplin measures success by whether or not a large number of
consumers will embrace the health benefits, color and taste of the
new tomato.

"Then it chips away at this negative perception of GMOs and that will
enable other products to get out to market that deliver really solid
benefits," he says. Benefits that include climate change,
sustainability, health and nutrition.

Sasa Woodruff reports on food and agriculture. She is the news
director of Boise State Public Radio.

  * genetically modified food
  * gardening
  * GMOs
  * anthocyanins
  * purple tomato
  * bioengineered food

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