The world’s favourite fruit only better-tasting and longer-lasting

[FarCenter]

Tomatoes, said to be the world’s most popular fruit, can be made both better-tasting and longer-lasting thanks to UK research with purple GM varieties.

“Working with GM tomatoes that are different to normal fruit only by the addition of a specific compound, allows us to pinpoint exactly how to breed in valuable traits,” said Professor Cathie Martin from the John Innes Centre.

The research could also lead to GM varieties with better flavour, health and shelf life characteristics because even higher levels of the compounds can be achieved.

In research to be published in Current Biology, Martin and colleagues studied tomatoes enriched in anthocyanin, a natural pigment that confers high antioxidant capacity. The purple GM tomatoes have already been found to prolong the lives of cancer-prone mice and in the latest findings they also more double the normal shelf life of tomatoes from an average of 21 days to 48 days.

http://news.jic.ac.uk/2013/05/purple-tomatoes

[marions ghost]

1. industry research

and your point is....?

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

2. First thing that came to mind: Attack of the killer Tomatoes!

[SDjack]

3. The tomatoes produced in home gardens and family farms taste great. nt

[eShirl]

4. nothing says healthy like a diet of frankenfoods

[customerserviceguy]

5. We're talking about a compound

that is already naturally in a tomato. We used to use breeding techniques to achieve hardiness, now we skip the randomness of sexual reproduction, and go for improvements on the genetic level.

I sure hope that there is labelling for the Luddites so they can pursue their fetish for old-timey things. Seeing how many people shell out extra bucks for organic stuff, I'm sure a market will arise to take their money.

[Le Taz Hot]

8. +1

[Viva_La_Revolution]

6. NO GMO blue tomato "Indigo Rose" bred by Oregon State University now available

I grew them last year, good taste, prolific and pretty.

[FarCenter]

7. My sister grows heirloom tomatoes, including purple ones

If these are both high in anthrocyanin and have extended shelf life, maybe there is hope for more nutritious varieties in the grocery store.

Much of the nutrients have been lost in commercially grown tomatoes because of breeding for shipping and shelf life using conventional methods, e.g. using either ionizing radiation or mutagenic chemicals to cause random mutations and then selecting phenotypes for further crossbreeding and selection.

[G_j]

9. if I want more anthocyanin

I'll have another heirloom, organically grown tomato, thank you.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Heirloom tomatoes