The Purple Tomato IRL
Antioxidant-rich fully purple cherry tomatoes available for the first time to home gardeners. I recently started harvesting them from my garden.
I previously wrote about my plan to grow the first GMO tomato seed available to home gardeners in the US because of my interest in antioxidants and especially anthocyanins. Obviously this is a controversial topic but I’m not strictly opposed to genetic modification (see my previous article for more info), I am just wary of most of it’s uses historically in crop production.
So, how does it taste?
It tastes like a regular red cherry tomato. Not bad nor particularly special taste-wise. I felt like I may have detected a slight taste of what I think of as the earthy “anthocyanin flavor” in the skin that I associate with potatoes that are fully purple or the skin flavor on open pollinated tomatoes that have purple skins (some describe it as smokey). Not a flavor I favor but it’s also pretty subtle in the scheme of things. I wonder if blackberries have that and I don’t usually notice because of the strong sweet (or tart if you get one that isn’t ripe) flavor overpowering their taste profile. Anyway, that flavor is subtle and they just taste like tomatoes. They look a little dull and almost black on the outside but stunningly gorgeous when cut open and the juice is a lovely shade of purple. I think sliced in half in a salad would be a stunner. Or imagine fresh mozzarella and cherry tomato salad with these! The color in the juice is strong and I suspect I could get some prints from them so I’ll need to try that. Definitely novel and fun.
Note: this plant was also my #singleseedchallege2024 where gardeners grow something that they spend more time observing or trying something new.