Get Ready To Grow Purple Tomatoes This Summer

It might only be February, but there's nothing wrong with fantasizing about a summer filled with a backyard full of juicy tomatoes. I can see some of you plotting out your gardens already. You can already grow red ones, green ones, yellow ones, orange ones—but this growing season, home gardeners will be able to add a new color to the list: deep purple.

Yes, there are naturally purple heirloom tomatoes, such as the Cherokee, but these new tomatoes, the seeds of which were only recently released on the general market, are very different. This cherry tomato, simply named the Purple Tomato, is a genetically modified organism (GMO)—and it's among the first GMOs in the United States sold to the general public rather than only to commercial producers.

NPR reports that the Purple Tomato, created by a company called Norfolk Plant Sciences, was deliberately designed to carry purple color genes from a snapdragon flower. The purple coloration doesn't just provide a royal color, but it also has high levels of anthocyanins, which are are antioxidants that have promising health effects like anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties. Plus, hey, the tomatoes just look cool.

There's also a marketing purpose to the Purple Tomato: to shift the public's perceptions of GMOs. Many people believe that consuming genetically modified foods isn't healthy, plus some believe that there are also ecological and ethical issues involved. GMOs were created in part to provide a stable food source in developing countries, such as wheat, corn, and rice. They are designed to be more pest resistant, more nutritious, and easier to grow than standard crops, but the idea of the plants having been tinkered with in a lab does raise many eyebrows.

How does the Purple Tomato taste? CBS News describes these cherry tomatoes as having "a rich and savory taste, much more bold and explosive than the sweetness of a red cherry tomato."

Sounds like a promising start to a salad, if you ask me. Plus it'd be a pretty good conversation starter at a backyard get together. If you're interested in growing some yourself, you can purchase the seeds for the Purple Tomato from Norfolk Healthy Produce ($20 for 10 seeds). With any luck, you should end up with a pretty photogenic dinner this summer.