Two years ago (almost exactly to the date!), I wrote about anthocyanin-rich purple tomatoes. I can’t locate the stories I linked to anymore, but at the time, Oregon State University researchers were still perfecting the breed of red-purple tomato that is rich in both lycopene (red pigment) and anthocyanin (purple pigment).
So it comes as a surprise reading about genetically modified purple tomatoes on BBC News (original press release from John Innes Center). Apparently an entirely different group of scientists have created the tomatoes by incorporating genes from the snapdragon flower, which is high in anthocyanin. The result is a …read more