Purple GMO tomatoes will be sold in the USA

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved a genetically modified purple tomato. According to scientists, this GMO product is also good for health and has a longer shelf life than red tomatoes. In addition, the purple tomato is enriched with the anti-cancer antioxidant "anthocyanin". That is why the vegetables have turned purple.

By 2005, plant scientist Katie Martin and her colleagues from the John Innes Center in the UK had created a purple tomato with a high content of anthocyanin. Scientists have added two genes from the esparcet flower to the tomato, which act as a switch to turn on the production of anthocyanins. Over the years, Martin and her team have been crossing their purple tomatoes with other varieties to make them bigger and tastier.

No matter how strange such a tomato looks, it is actually healthier than traditional red and yellow varieties. Anthocyanins give purple pigments that make blueberries, blackberries, eggplants and blue cabbage blue-purple. They are associated with a number of positive health effects, including reducing the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

These anthocyanin mutant tomatoes showed a "stunning" result in tests: cancer-prone mice that consumed such tomatoes lived 30% longer than individuals who consumed ordinary tomatoes. Of course, the new tomatoes do not act as medicines, such an effect is due to a complex of vitamins and antioxidants that affect the composition of the intestinal microbiome.

Norfolk Plant Science intends to sell seeds to farmers, so that they, in turn, sell the tomatoes they have grown to consumers. After receiving feedback, breeders plan to develop other products. At the same time, the company is making efforts to get its genetically modified tomatoes approved in the UK.

Since their introduction in the 1990s, extensive research has shown that genetically modified foods are just as safe for health as their non-GMO counterparts. Nevertheless, a survey conducted in October 2019 by the Pew Research Center showed that about half of US adults are concerned about the impact of genetically modified foods on health, while 41% claim that they have a neutral effect on health, and 7% say that they are better for health than other products.