Purple Tomato

Today farmers are not growing tomatoes of purple color. Scientists have worked very hard and engineered purple tomatoes transferring the two anthocyanin genes into the cultivated species of the tomato from the plant species of snapdragon. The flowers of the plants species of snapdragon contain sufficient quantity of anthocyanin. The anthocyanin is a pigment which makes plant parts purple and the pigment works as an powerful antioxidant. The newly engineered purple tomato fruit is rich in anthocyanin pigments in its rind as well as the tomato flesh. Thus, the tomato became purple. The work was done at John Innes Centre, Norwich, the United Kingdom.

The antioxidant is very powerful substance to fight against the attack of several fatal diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular ailment and many other health problems. Tomato fruits contain several minerals, electrolytes, and vitamins. Some of vitamins such as lycopene have powerful antioxidant property. If anthocyanin pigment is also loaded into the tomato fruits, the tomato fruits will be extraordinarily beneficial for the human being to fight against several fatal diseases and age related degenerative condition of the memory, intellectuality and thinking: Alzheimer’s disease.

Some fruits are blackberry, cranberry and chokeberry that contain large quantity of anthocyanin pigments. The intake of the pigments in the form of the fruits has delayed growth of cancer in colon cells significantly. It has been believed that the anthocyanin pigment protects human being from cardiovascular and age-related degenerative problems. Scientific researches have shown evidences that the anthocyanin have anti-inflammatory traits. The pigments also help improve the vision and lower obesity and diabetes temporarily.

Scientific experiments were conducted to find the effect of feeding of purple tomato and ordinary red tomato on mice that they were susceptible to cancer. The mice that were fed the diet supplemented with anthocyanin rich purple tomatoes survived significantly longer than the mice that they were fed the diet supplemented with the ordinary red tomatoes. But scientists are now interested to see the effects of the diet supplemented with purple tomato and ordinary red tomato in human being. It will now be too early to forecast about the result of the experiments.

People are growing tomatoes almost everywhere in the world; but they are not growing black grapes, blackberries, cranberries and chokeberries everywhere in the world. Black berries, blue berries, currants contain considerable amount of the anthocyanin pigment but the fruits could not be produced everywhere in the world. So the newly bred purple tomato with the rich reservoir of the anthocyanin, lycopene, retinol, ascorbic acid, vitamin B complex, vitamin E and vitamin K can be one of the most important sources of antioxidants. The tomato fruit will be one of the most widely available vegetable to supply so many powerful antioxidants to the people in the world. Metabolic and gene engineered plant species: purple tomato will be the first crop that most people in the world will start consuming because of the presence of the loads of large quantity of diverse kind of antioxidants in the fruit and deliciousness of the tomato fruit. A medium size purple tomato fruit contains as much anthocyanin pigment as the quantity of cranberries fruits in a spoon.

The scientists have anticipated the similar effects in the human being as the results obtained in the genetically engineering mice feeding the diet supplemented with the juice of purple tomato. In the experiment, the cancer susceptible human engineered mice were fed the diet supplemented with the juice of purple tomato survived significantly longer than the genetically engineered cancer susceptible mice that was fed the diet supplemented with red tomato juice. But it is now too early to forecast about the findings of the experiment. Gardeners are waiting the tomato seeds of purple tomatoes. When they get the seeds of purple tomato plants, they will start growing tomatoes of purple color.

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