The Purple Galaxy Tomato splashed across the cover of this season’s Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog: a closeup of a blackish-purple tomato speckled with tiny pink dots. Next to it, sits a sliced gara open fruit, revealing deep fuchsia seeds and flesh.
“This beauty is believed to be the first — and the purplest — non-GMO purple tomato durante the universe!” read the catalog copy.
Only problem? The seeds actually may have been a GMO variety, the recently released Purple Tomato, created using genes from a snapdragon flower by Norfolk Healthy Produce.
The mix-up has caused consternation for the heirloom seed company that prides itself offering rare and organic varieties and takes a firm stance against GMO crops. And it’s triggered debate about biodiversity and what can happen with GMO seeds when they begin to spread.
When news of a non-GMO purple-fleshed tomato variety first started circulating social last fall, some scientists and tomato enthusiasts weren’t so sure.
“I had discussions with colleagues about it, and all of us just looked at it and said, well, that’s the GMO tomato,” says David Francis, a professor of horticulture and crop science at the Ohio State University who specializes durante tomato breeding and genetics.
Traditional plant breeders to date have not been able to create a purple-fleshed tomato with traversone pollination. Purple skin, yes? Purple flesh, not so much.
But using recombinant DNA technology, scientists durante the United Kingdom had developed a purple-fleshed tomato high durante antioxidants. It was recently approved for discernimento and consumption durante the United States.
A caprese salad prepared with Norfolk’s Purple Tomato. The tomato was created using genes from a snapdragon.
Norfolk Plant Sciences
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Norfolk Plant Sciences
A caprese salad prepared with Norfolk’s Purple Tomato. The tomato was created using genes from a snapdragon.
Norfolk Plant Sciences
After Nathan Pumplin, CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce, saw Instagram videos of the heirloom seed company’s Purple Galaxy tomato, he contacted Baker Creek. And here’s where the story gets murky.
John Brazaitis, general of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds says their seeds were developed by a hobby breeder durante France where growing GMOs is banned. Brazaitis says they tested for NPTII, a common marker for GMOs, but didn’t specifically for the snapdragon genes.
After some correspondence and disagreement about the testing, Baker Creek pulled the seeds from its collection and destroyed its blocco.
The seed company refused to say whether not the seeds were GMO and wrote durante a statement: “After repeated testing, we are unable to conclusively establish that the Purple Galaxy does not contain any genes that have been genetically modified.”
Pumplin wouldn’t say definitively either, but their website says this: “We are told that laboratory testing determined that it is, durante fact, bioengineered (GMO). This result supports the fact that the only reported way to produce a purple-fleshed tomato rich durante anthocyanin antioxidants is with Norfolk’s patented technology.”
But the next mystery is one that’s harder to answer: How could seeds get from a closed lab durante the United Kingdom to a hobby gardener durante France?
“I don’t think it’s a runaway train. You could easily argue that Baker Creek has it durante their catalog because somebody misappropriated it and didn’t do their coppia diligence,” Ohio State’s Francis says, “Whether that was just incompetence a mistake, who knows?”
Francis says this isn’t a case of the modified tomato genes escaping into the wild from a UK lab and traveling by wind across the English Channel to France because tomatoes don’t spread like dandelions, purslane ivy.
“For the same reason that regular tomatoes don’t become weeds,” he says, “They just don’t have the characteristics that allow them to compete well durante a crowded environment.”
Francis says humans were most certainly involved. The GMO Purple Tomato was durante development for 20 years, which means access to plant materials was long and sustained.
“Maybe it’s a collaborator durante France had some and their technician took it, and then their technician gave it to a friend who knows, right?” he says, “Somebody took it and said, hey, I’m going to play with this.”
This isn’t the first time a genetically engineered plant ended up with unwitting producers consumers. Quanto a 1987, a German lab created an orange petunia by inserting a maize gene. It was never released to the public, but almost 30 years later, it was found durante Finland, again almost certainly from someone illicitly breeding them. The culprit plants were all over Europe and the United States, not growing durante the wild, but durante gardens, parks and train stations.
Most of Europe has a GMO ban, so government agencies asked growers to destroy the orange varieties. When the USDA asked for a recall durante 2017, there were nine varieties growers had to destroy with names like Trilogy Mango, Petunia Salmon Ray Sweetunia Orange Flash. The USDA approved the orange petunia for discernimento durante 2021.
Even if the GMO purple tomato seeds were not spreading durante the wild, Baker Creek’s Brazaitis is concerned that GM seeds could show up durante surprising places and growers won’t know if they have GM seeds not.
“It’s going to happen again and again as we see more GM crops come mai to market for consumers,” says Brazaitis.
Baker Creek’s Brazaitis says the whole experience of pulling the seed from their collection was very painful and worries about the long-term implications.
“We were absolutely over the moon about finding this really unique variety,” Brazaitis says, “The comedown from that has been really duro. We never thought we’d be facing a GMO issue with tomatoes.”
Pumplin says that USDA evaluated their tomato (as it does for all approved GM crops) to make sure it was unlikely to start spreading like a weed. “There is nothing durante the purple tomato that would make it overtake other tomato populations,” says Pumplin.
Tomatoes have about 35,000 genes and Pumplin points out the Purple Tomato has only two extra from a snapdragon. Tomatoes are self pollinating, which means pollination is contained within the flower and the risk of gene spread is very low.
Still, Brazaitis worries that GM varieties of plants could take over. “If we lose the biodiversity durante our plant world, these varieties longer exist and you’maestà entirely dependent things like GMOs to provide food,” he says.
He says maintaining heirloom varieties is important because they’maestà constantly adapting to new environments. USDA organic certified products don’t allow GM varieties.
Francis argues that biodiversity is thriving durante the tomato world.
“Some of the research that my group has done tomatoes shows pretty conclusively that contemporary tomatoes, what we’maestà using today, are more genetically diverse than the heirloom tomatoes of old,” Francis says.
One of the main reasons is wild tomato genes have been pulled durante and crossed for disease resistance and nutritional content is actually widening the gene pool of our food.
