I ordered my Purple Tomato seeds a couple weeks ago when I first saw the article about them. I eat tomatoes. I eat snapdragons. Now I will (hopefully) eat snapdragon colored tomatoes.

The agreement says no sales but seems to encourage spreading the joy via seeds and maybe cuttings. It is to their benefit to get more people involved and enthusiastic about this project:

https://www.chemistryworld.com...

I would guess the genetics are relatively stable so seed saving is an option but, if you get a good tasting tomato, start some plants. One of the articles I read said the Purple Tomato was good at vegetative growth (and hopefully grows a tomato once in awhile).

Something more to read:
https://www.npr.org/sections/h...

Sweet Million and Supersweet 100's are basically the same tomato with SS100's having a bit more resistance to the South Texas problems. Love them both.

Hortaholic said:As to other kinds of transgenic plants- some have caused ecological damage beyond the reduction of diversity mentioned by Jill @critterologist. A plant called horse weed rapidly developed resistance to RoundUp so completely that it overwhelmed RU-resistant soybean fields.

I'm so sorry the farmers across the road are making poor choices that are hurting your plants!
I promise NOT to spray my purple tomatoes with Roundup!

Of course, that horseweed you mentioned developed a resistance to Roundup because it was being sprayed with lots of Roundup- likely incessantly and indiscriminately. The farmers' herbicide use (and other 'no-till' practices,) are the cause of this...

widespread and repeated glyphosate use without diversified weed management has increased the selection of resistant species

Pat: I would love to attend a symposium on GMO like you did-
What did they say about the newer GMO technologies- like editing a gene (CRISPR) instead of inserting one (transgenic?)

Lucy, I didn't know snapdragons were edible! Now I must grow some snapdragons this year. Are any colors/varieties better tasting than others? With pansies, I usually prefer the blue/purple ones -- they taste of cucumber to me, and other colors usually seem tasteless.

Actually they're kind of tasteless but have a lot of nutritional value. My turtles like them. Once in awhile, they're bitter - I'm not sure why.

Maybe its my taste buds. I swear last summer all my nasturtiums tasted like grass. The red rose petals always taste better than the lighter colors and you're right, the dark colored pansies and violets taste better too.

Thanks! Bet your turtles don't care if they're bitter. Peanut (guinea pig) ate the lettuce all last summer no matter how bitter it got.

I'm really glad we've been able to discuss this topic politely no matter how strong our personal opinions.

No GMO's for me. Thank you.

Jill, if you like edible flowers, you should definitely grow some yucca. They taste like lettuce, just a little more bitter, but have a sweet aftertaste. They're crunchy, and quite healthy. They're definitely my favorite edible flower.

Plus, you can cook the bloom stalks like asparagus.

I think I would pretty much have to batter and deep fry any flowers that I attempted to serve as food around here .

Salad! Colorful tomatoes and flowers are the best I can do to brighten up all that green lettuce and micro-sprouts. The flowers are more of a garnish - that's why it doesn't matter if some of them are less than tasty.

Agreed, Lucy! It's the best when you can put unusual, but tasty greens into your salads to add a fancier, more colorful look to it. Nobody wants boring ol' Caesar salad all the time.

I have no issues with boring food, there's always pepper sauce to help...

Guess what was in the mail?

Lucy!

Woohoo! We'll be awaiting progress reports and reviews!

I was curious about the study published in Nature about mice living longer when they ate purple tomatoes... more specifically, cancer-prone mice who ate dehydrated purple tomato powder as 10% of their diet lived 30% longer than those who ate the same amount of dehydrated red tomato or those who ate no tomato. So, the anthocyanins in these tomatoes can make a difference (at least if you're a mouse).

At $20 for 10 seeds, I'll see if the cost comes down. Or maybe somebody will save seeds to share in a seed swap next year! (You can't sell them, but I think it's OK to share them?)

Lucy, I can't wait for a report on flavor and on whether they hold their color with cooking!

I'm curious about the color change (or not) too; is the purple color of other veggies (beans, for instance) produced by the same thing as these purple tomatoes? (anthocyanins, I think??)

I couldn't find information on whether or not the color is retained with cooking, although I did find information on the site that you could make purple tomato juice and that there will be purple salsa available for sale this year... I would think the salsa, at least, would require heat processing, so maybe?

I used their "contact us" email address and invited them to join our discussion as well as asking about whether the purple color holds up during cooking.

That would be fun! They could get a lot of free advertising by joining a group like this.

I assumed the color stayed because of the hype about purple tomato juice and purple salsa. Because its seed, not every plant will be created equally but it sounds like pretty stable genetics.

The seeds shipped from Davis, CA, not the University, but rather a store front as far as I can tell from Google Earth.