Comments on: Purple tomatoes and a fresh approach to GM trials

By: Peter Griffin

Peter Griffin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:02:37 +0000

Hi Claire, I think the answer may lie in this BBC story about the purple tomatoes… “anthocyanins accumulated in tomatoes at higher levels than anything previously achieved in both the peel and flesh of the fruit, giving them an intense purple colour”. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7688310.stm
I don’t have any ideological viewpoint on GM one way or the other, all I am out to promote is good science, something which is often absent from the GM debate.

By: Claire Bleakley

Claire Bleakley — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:55:08 +0000

Hi Peter, Glad to see you back from England gathering your GE stories. However I would like to point out that you have failed to truly reflect the reality of the tomato story. We already have an array of non hybrid heritage tomatoes of which many are purple and contain extremely high levels of anthocyanins. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_purple). These are available to the public for the normal price of tomato seeds, no patents no foreign genes from other plants, proven safe over the millenia, non sterile saveable seed and highly nutritious also they are the size of beafsteak tomatoes not tiny toms. What is the reason that you want to promote GE purple tomaotoes as an unbiased journalist you should cover both sides of the story.

By: GM probe: Minor transgressions…major implications | Griffin’s Gadgets

GM probe: Minor transgressions…major implications | Griffin’s Gadgets — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:53:58 +0000

[...] more than glasshouses – the photo below is of a glasshouse at the John Innes Centre in the UK I visited earlier in the year where scientists are splicing genes from the snapdragon flower into tomatoes. [...]