Adam Vaughan is a writer.
Tomatoes that have been edited to produce vitamins D and E.
The John Innes Centre.
As the UK government prepares to change the law to allow the sale ofprecision-bred food in supermarkets, biologists have created tomatoes that offer a new plant-based source of vitamins D and E.
About a billion people around the world don't get enough of the sunshine-starved vitamins D and E because they don't get enough of tomatoes. The engineered fruit has a vegan alternative.
The tomatoes face a number of technical and economic hurdles before they can be widely available, despite the UK government introducing a bill to treat gene-edited food differently to genetically modified organisms.
They were made by altering a small part of the Sl7-DR2 gene. It looked like a normal tomato fruit.
It would have been very difficult to use traditional plant breeding to arrive at a natural change in the gene because of its structure. She says that traditional techniques would have taken 10 years to achieve the same result as using a gene-editing technology.
The tomatoes are a new way to get more vitamins D and D3 and are more expensive than the majority of vitamins D and D3 supplements.
It is not known if the edited tomatoes will cost more than the conventional ones. They shouldn't because growers could make more money from the vitamins in the leaves and green shoots, according to Martin. More research is needed to see if that can be done.
If exposed to the sun's UV rays, provitamin D3 can be converted to the other type of vitamins D and D3. Tomatoes will be grown outside in government-approved field trials in June to see how much vitamins D3 and calcium they produce. Artificial lighting needs to provide enough UV to be cost and energy efficient. The tomatoes will need a commercial grower to adopt them in order to reach shops.
The University in Sweden says the editing opens up new opportunities.
Nature Plants is a journal reference.
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