Dan visits Norfolk Healthy Produce Greenhouse with CEO Nathan Pumplin to get the scoop on the New Snapdragon Tomato, the highest-antioxidant cherry tomato!
Thank you for posting this! I just bought my first pack of GMO Purple Tomato seeds from them and I'm super excited to grow them and was really happy to find this interview!
As interestng as it all is. You simply can't claim you know what such a fruit would change in the eco system. A more nutritious fruit would in the end also mean more nutrated insects.
Just ordered a pack of seeds ... im excited. I tried Indigo Rose a few years ago, and they were pretty ... but I found them underwhelming. From memory, they were uneven ripening (tough n green near stem), ho hum flavor, modest yeilding, and I had disease issues (fusarium I think). I gave them up in favor of Supersweet 100 and Sun Sugar. This new strain seems a lot more bold in color and is supposedly a lot better tasting than Indigo Rose was. Nutritious too. I'll start a few the instant they arrive in the mail.
It's day 8 and my seeds still havent arrived. I dont even have a carrier name or a tracking number yet. My other seed suppliers nearly alwayd take less than 5 days ... this is decidedly slow in comparison. - Psyched for the product, but the S&H blows horse puckey.
A lot of folks don’t realize we made broccoli, banana so many things. I bought them but I wonder if this product is to get us use to GMO products. We also don’t know what happens if you plant next to a regular tomato. Does it cross pollinate?
Yes, it's not unlike a "gateway drug" so people will be more open to eating GMO foods. I imagine it will cross-pollinate which is why I hope none of my neighbors are growing this thing. ❤☮🌎
This is very interesting and I'm probably going to get some seeds, as I love purple varieties. I notice that the vines look to be about 12 feet in the air. Does the home gardener need to have an extremely tall trellis or are there ways to grow it on a 4-6 foot trellis? Can it be grown like a grapevine on a fence up and down and horizontally, and would it hurt it to prune it to manageable size? Also what size are the grow bags used? They look to me to be about 3 gallon. Is that right? I was surprised to see the root ball fits in that small a bag!
This is a GMO Tomato and I wouldn't want any of my neighbors to be growing this to avoid any cross contamination with anything in my yard. If people want a purple Tomato, there are a number of non-GMO heirloom varieties available that are blue/purple/black so if someone wants those anthocyanins they can try one of those for something new and exciting..whoo-hoo (there are 10,000 non-GMO Tomato varieties already). And guess what? Red Tomatoes have anthocyanins in them too. And for all the guys buying this thing, Lycopene is what's in Tomatoes that helps prevent prostate cancer (it's in red, pink and orange foods). Wonder if this Tomato has any Lycopene in it? And Lycopene is more bioavailable to the body when Tomatoes are cooked, and cooked with a fat like Olive Oil as Lycopene is fat soluble. Don't want to support any company supporting GMO tech that would like seed saving to not exist. You can save these seeds but you can't sell them or sell the Tomatoes due to intellectual property laws (unlike heirloom Tomatoes). Again, the Norfolk guy is alluding that biotech is just like old school hybridization techniques...which it's not. Saying that the issues of food safety and effect on the environment regarding GMO/GEO foods are done deals is false. Won't grow this and won't eat it. If I know of any restaurant is using this, they'll be losing my business and will tell whoever I know to not support it either. Dan the Produce Man is spouting the long spoken biotech line that GMO/GEO foods are the EXACT same as doing old school hybridization methods...it's not. And yes, all GMO foods are crap. They are not doing studies as to what eating these Tomatoes will do to your gut microbiome (tip of the iceberg in terms of what's not being studied, and the studies that are being done are done by the companies making the GMO products which can be referred to as the "fox guarding the henhouse"...it's not independent research). There are 1,000 varieties of Bananas, big ag has screwed everything up by planting monocrops (only using Cavendish Bananas like...forever). GMO Bananas are not the only answer. Labelling still isn't what it needs to be for people who don't want to eat GMO foods. It's not clear and it's not thorough. If anyone's interested (which from reading the comments I think not, but never say never), there are two movies that are informative regarding GMO foods (oldies but still relevant)...The Future of Food and Genetic Roulette (you can see the trailers and possibly the whole films on RU-vid). ❤☮🌎
Given the processed used in this instance I don't see how this could reasonably be harmful. If one can eat snapdragons without it making them sick and in fact they're nutritious then this should not make anyone sick either. He uses a gene for color and added nutrition. That's it. I didn't have the impression he was saying it's just like natural hybridization. In standard hybridization you can't control which genes are going to be inherited as there could be hundreds in each parent plant which could make the offspring either better or worse. There's no way to control which genes are expressed. However, with this sort of genetic modification one can. In some respects it might even be safer because there are less variables to control if you are only taking one or a few genes and putting them into a plant or a seed.
I haven't looked into the details of how they created this Tomato (and not sure if I could because of intellectual property rights, etc.). So not knowing the exact process, I'm not convinced that there might not be possible allergens or other things used in the process that could create the all too common "unintended consequences" somewhere down the line. You don't find what you're not testing for (more anthocyanin but less ???) and when it comes to edible things it doesn't seem like studies have been long enough to indicate problems (and the studies are coming from the companies making the products which is not how independent research gets done). Manipulating genes is a type of science I now refer to as "oops" science. There's such extreme certainty until there isn't, and what can one say at that point but "oops"! If there was such certainty in the process of gene manipulation you wouldn't have things happen as the butterflies that were only going to change one color and everything was certain until they started breeding out these insects and even though they were only going for color changes and nothing else and knew for sure what genes were going where, they ended up with deformed legs and antennae which according to the scientists should not have happened...oops! Even if I could dig up the study regarding these insects (it was a few years ago but I think it was in England), I can't put links in as they seem to trigger my comments getting deleted. When it comes to GMO/GEO plants, etc., I keep hearing "it can't possibly happen" until it inevitably does. FYI - I find it ironic, creepy and amusing that I know of a major research center doing biotech work that has a certified organic food delivery service which a decent number of the scientists and employees participate in (I know who's supplying the food). They could have chosen local and not sprayed food if they just wanted to avoid pesticides (that choice was available), but instead they went with certified organic which will not contain any GMO foods grown from GMO seeds. If people working in this industry don't want to eat the GMO crap they're creating, why should I? ❤☮🌎 @@IAMGiftbearer
the information is available regarding how it's done. It's compared to hybridization because it's modifying genetics to get the end result you want. They are just activating the anthocyanins. Hybridization has at many times inactivated or activated certain genes. Cucumbers are one of the top of my head. IP doesn't stop you from selling them. A contract does. Why would they see what it does to your gut microbiome? Statements like that are fear mongering. Why not studies to see what it does to your cholesterol, heart rate, sexual performance? Just arbitrarily picking test is silly. How about we require extensive testing for anyone that grows and shares heirlooms and also grows any other member of the solanaceae family to make sure they aren't creating a poisonous hybrid.
