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Talking Biotech is a weekly podcast that uncovers the stories, ideas and research of people at the frontier of biology and engineering.
Each episode explores how science and technology will transform agriculture, protect the environment, and feed 10 billion people by 2050.
Interviews are led by Dr. Kevin Folta, a professor of molecular biology and genomics.
Dr. Kevin Folta (00:00.093)
it works pretty well. It's got some clunkiness to it, but they're getting better. And so, not so bad. But all right, let's go for it. Here we go.
Hi everybody and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech podcast by Calabra. Now last year, 2024, an event came and went without any fanfare. It was the first genetically engineered plant product and it was approved back in 20, no, 1994. So it was the 30 year anniversary of the first genetically engineered plant product. And at the time, this was considered a massive step forward. This was a tomato that had genes installed.
to resist certain changes with ripening, especially softening. And so it allowed better shipping of a fully ripened tomato, which they thought consumers would really appreciate. But it went over like a lead balloon, and the flavor saver genetics, they were introduced into an inferior tomato background. So extending the shelf life of something that wasn't outstanding to begin with wasn't a big step forward. It was truly unfortunate because it really was targeting the consumer. In other words,
subsequent genetic innovations would end up being made for farmers, things like insect resistance that were not necessarily something the consumer would see or value. And sadly, that kind of set the tone for all the critics who said there's no real benefit to these technologies. It just doesn't exist. But recently, this all changed with the introduction of the first genetically engineered tomato made especially for consumers.
The Big Purple Tomato or the Purple Tomato was released in 2024 by Norfolk Healthy Produce. And this was an innovation that allowed us to now have gardeners and homeowners and just general consumers have access to a dark purple tomato that was really a game changer. So we're going to talk about that today. We're speaking with Dr. Nathan Pumplin. He's the CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce. So welcome to the podcast, Nathan.
Nathan (02:12.114)
Thank you, Kevin. It's great to be here.
Dr. Kevin Folta (02:14.684)
Yeah, it's really cool. spoke with Dr. Kathy Martin years ago about this and we looked forward to a day where there actually may be a product that would be available to consumers. And so here we are. We're ready to roll. So could you tell me, start off with, tell me a little bit about what your role is with Norfolk Healthy Produce and how this moved from something that was on paper as just,
an innovation make this the anthocyanin accumulation throughout the tomato how that the purple pigment I should say for those who don't know plants it sounded like a solution looking for a problem so what was the justification to even take on this project
Nathan (03:01.262)
Yeah, so let me break that apart. So I am CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce. It's my role, my job to take this purple tomato from the university, from concept, from scientific breakthrough, out into a product that's readily available to those consumers who really want it. So how did I get into this role? Well, I'm a PhD trained plant geneticist. I've been working in this area for the last 20 years.
at that intersection between research development and commercialization and really cultural change. It really has to go all the way. So, you know, what you brought up is it sounded like a solution looking for a problem. know, nobody is running around saying, boy, my life is lacking purple tomatoes. That's the one thing that would, you know, save me, make everything better. Actually, we find that's not the case.
And it's really interesting when we look at the development of new products in the world, whether it's, you know, new types of cell phones or having the opportunity to do video chats. You know, a lot of people don't know that their lives would be improved by these products until those products come along. And so, you know, the story people often tell it's apocryphal is that if Henry Ford asked people what they wanted over a hundred years ago, they'd say they want a faster horse, you know, and it's not until
you show them the new product and they say, wow, well that's really cool. that means you could do this. So you're absolutely right. I've been doing this project for about three and a half years and I didn't choose it, it chose me and we could dive into that more. When I got started and I started telling people, hey, we have this purple tomato, it has the nutrients of blueberries, I think it's really cool, we're gonna try to sell it. People said, you know, does anybody really want this? This is a tech.
You know, this is scientists who made something, who are trying to push it out in the world, and nobody wants it. What we know today is that's simply wrong. When I go with a purple tomato and I say, you know, I don't even need to say anything. We have a farmer's market booth here in Davis, California, or I'm at a conference or I'm rocking down the street and I have a basket of tomatoes, people stop me and they say, hey, hey, what is that? What are you holding? What are you carrying?
Dr. Kevin Folta (05:03.761)
You
Nathan (05:22.84)
I've never seen something like that before and I say, it's a purple tomato. And they say, a purple tomato? What the heck is that? I've never heard of it. So I give the story and they say, wow, that's really cool. Okay, know, I know antioxidants are good for me. I've heard eat the rainbow. I don't eat so many purple things, boy, you know, okay, I want that. Where can I get it? How can I get it? Tell me more. And so once you have the product and you're able to show it to people, then the curiosity opens up, the interest opens up.
questions pour forward and it's it's a heck of a lot of fun to talk to people about it. And so, you know, the answer to your question is there are a lot of people who really, really want purple tomatoes. And now we're in the process of meeting them where they are and getting it out into the world.
Dr. Kevin Folta (06:07.987)
very good. Now you said that it found you though. And can you fill us in a little bit more on that?
Nathan (06:13.932)
Yeah, absolutely. I am, I'm a scientist who's very interested in this intersection of our human culture and how that interacts with evidence and facts and changing technologies. And so, you know, the world that a lot of us as geneticists come from, and I hope, I hope, okay, I'm not lagging. The world that we come from is, hey, we have this biotechnology.
It's really powerful to solve a lot of problems, whether that's climate change, whether that's health and nutrition, whether that's the economics of farming. And yet there's this disconnect of scientists say biotechnology brings all these benefits and yet it seems like the average people want non-GMO. They're afraid of what this technology is in their food. And that's really a big disconnect that I found really fascinating. And I think a lot of people who study technology
find fascinating and find very disappointing.
Nathan (07:19.246)
Are you on a call right now? you guys turn off the video or something? I'm wondering if we're limited bandwidth because I just got kicked off this interview. Thanks. I don't know if it'll help, but it won't hurt.
Dr. Kevin Folta (07:29.737)
Yeah, I did too. yeah, something happened there where we, that's all right. That's all right.
Yeah, I had a issue. I don't know if it was on your end or my end or how that happened, but what we can do is what we can do is let me go back to that question again and we can edit. That's not too bad. If we eventually have a problem, we can go back and just do audio only. But oops, are you still there now?
Yeah, there you are.
Can you hear me okay?
Now can't hear me. Can you hear. Why. What's going on here. Weird.
Dr. Kevin Folta (08:23.275)
Very strange.
Nathan (08:29.493)
Can you hear me?
Dr. Kevin Folta (08:29.505)
Yeah, I can hear you you can't hear me can you hear me no
Dr. Kevin Folta (08:48.305)
Let's try that again.
Dr. Kevin Folta (09:01.391)
It seems like my camera just died. Just... Here, hang on.
Dr. Kevin Folta (09:09.327)
Let me do this.
Hang on.
Dr. Kevin Folta (11:51.261)
Yeah, that was weird.
Nathan (11:54.258)
All right. Well, I've got your back.
Dr. Kevin Folta (11:55.443)
All right. Yeah, I don't know what happened there. Did you have a bandwidth issue on your side or something you mentioned?
Nathan (12:02.152)
I may have a bandwidth issue on my side, yeah. I just did a speed check and it seems good.
Dr. Kevin Folta (12:05.351)
Yeah.
All right, I'm OK here too, but I'm out in the country. I'm recording from home because we've got a daughter in the NICU and our days are really screwed up. I'm at home and it's getting really stormy. And so when it gets stormy in the country, the internet goes goofy. But we'll get through this. So let me go back to the...
Nathan (12:21.049)
my gosh.
Nathan (12:34.228)
I understand that, yeah. It chose me is where we were.
Dr. Kevin Folta (12:39.827)
Yeah, it's oh, yeah, that's so let me go back to that you mentioned that it shows you and I'll be able to put it together. OK, so actually it's recording already. OK, here we go. It says trying to reconnect, make sure you have a stable connection. Yeah, hold on a second. It's showing that weirdness on my end. OK, think we're good. Here we go. If it gets bad, we'll just go just audio only and they'll pull it off easy. Here go. Well, you mentioned that this shows you. So what do you mean by that?
Nathan (13:10.228)
I was looking for an interesting project about three and a half years ago that would be again at this intersection of culture, of science and of business. And I met Eric Ward, who is one of the early founders of Norfolk Plant Sciences. And he said, we have two interesting things with the purple tomato.
One, we're about to have a path to get regulatory approval so we can commercialize it. And two, we're about to be on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine. And I sort of laughed. said, I know the purple tomato. I used to teach the original publication to a class. So let me add an aside here. I did my PhD in plant genetics at Cornell. Then I went on to do a postdoc in Zurich.
And I was in a lab right next door to where Ingo Potrykus had made golden rice. Ingo Potrykus had retired. There were still people from his lab who were developing the courses. And so one of the classes that I used to teach had a lot of things around nutritional fortification of foods. And Cathy Martin's original publication on the purple tomato is a fantastic piece of science. And it's a fantastic.
publication to review with students because you go all the way from discovering a gene, putting, that's a gene in snapdragons, putting it into tomatoes, seeing what the effect in tomatoes is, and then going all the way to doing a feeding study in cancer prone mice and showing that purple tomatoes will extend the lifespan of cancer prone mice by 30%. And so I was very familiar with the science. And when Eric first told me about it, I said,
You've got to be kidding, a GMO tomato, you know, there's no way that you can ever, that anyone's going to buy a GMO tomato, bring it out to market. And I was initially resistant to the idea. And the more I thought about it, and the more I talked to people, both scientists and people out in the market, excuse me, the more I realized, actually, this is a really, really interesting product. And here's the reason. So you brought up flavor saver tomato as,
Nathan (15:29.298)
one of the first genetically engineered products that got onto the market. And it sounds like it would have benefits to the consumer, right? Consumers want less food waste, they want better tasting food. Okay, here's a tomato with longer shelf life. The problem is, it takes a lot of imagination to look at a red tomato that has longer shelf life and believe that it's better. It takes a lot of imagination to say,
Hey, here's a tomato that's resistant to diseases and it can reduce the use of pesticides. That's something that the average consumer simply, you know, can't grasp onto. And I completely understand that. The magic of the purple tomato is it doesn't take any imagination. You look at it and you say, oh my gosh, this is different. Why is this different? Let's have a conversation about it. And you'll have a conversation about reality.
You're having conversation about a product that's right in front of you that you can literally sink your teeth into. And so that's sort of when it finally chose me, I thought, okay, this is gonna be really cool. And I dipped a toe in and I worked with it part-time for a little bit. And I was just, I was blown away by the response that people had to the product. And so that's literally, you know, I loved it so much. I bought into the company and now it's my full-time job.
Dr. Kevin Folta (16:34.131)
You
Dr. Kevin Folta (16:50.387)
Well, that's really cool when you talk about big response. I can imagine there's a lot of geeks out there like me who were all excited because we like genetic innovations and and that there would be a decent amount of response. But how has the response been so far, especially like at the Davis Farmer's Market, which tends to be a little crunchy, you know, I've been there. I didn't seem like that would be a place where a purple tomato genetically engineered would go over very well.
Nathan (17:14.088)
Cough
Nathan (17:20.894)
Well, so Kevin, you just put your finger on it. Geneticists believe that a place like the Davis farmers market would be resistant to a GMO tomato. And that is the problem. So I'll cut right to the answer. The people who are resistant to biotechnology are biotechnologists. It's one of the huge surprises of this whole project is actually scientists, we've all been standing in our own way. It's seed companies, it's
It's plant breeders, it's geneticists who say, crunchy people don't like GMOs, they're anti-GMOs. The universe has moved on. People have moved on and we are still stuck in the past. We're still stuck in protests against Monsanto from 20 years ago. know, there are a small fraction of people who are still buying into this. The rest of the world has moved on. It's time for us as scientists, as plant breeders,
It's time for us to move on because we're really the only ones by and large living in the past. So what happens when we sell GMO tomatoes at the Davis farmers market? People come up and they say, my gosh, I'm glad I got here in time before you sold out. Okay, I want two pints. They come up and they say they're with their friend and they say, hey, these are the folks that I've been telling you about. This is the purple tomato. It has the nutrients of blueberries. It is completely different.
We have people who come up to the booth and say, so your tomato is bioengineered. that, is that, you know, what do you call it? Is that a GMO? Say yes, it's what people usually call a GMO. They say, well, isn't that supposed to be bad for me? I've, I've heard that it's bad for me. say, well, let's talk about the science. Let's talk about what it means to have genes from Snapdragon added to this tomato. And they say, huh, okay. You know,
Does it have pesticides? I always heard GMOs have pesticides. I say, no, no, it doesn't have pesticides. It just has these nutrients. They say, well, does it cause cancer? They say, well, in mice, we've shown that it reduces cancer and it extends the life of cancer-prone mice. They say, wow, that's really interesting. Well, do you grow it organically? Because I really, I want things grown organically. And I say, well, actually, most of the time we use entirely organic inputs.
Nathan (19:41.48)
We do use inorganic fertilizers because we're growing in a greenhouse. And usually we go into this whole conversation about production methods. And what's amazing is these people who, Kevin, you would expect are anti-GMO, they're hippies. They say, hey, I really like this. I want to buy it. And they'll hang out for 30 minutes and they'll ask a bunch of questions. They're very curious and they're very interested in it. And this is a conversation that we couldn't have unless we have a product. Otherwise, it's all theoretical. It's this weird science stuff.
We're having a conversation around this really interesting product that's there. So let me give you a few other factoids that are really important. We started selling tomatoes in grocery stores. We were in Lidl, Foodline, and Food City in the Mid-Atlantic. We sold over 100,000 clam shells of purple tomatoes. This is a huge number in our test market season, and we did it with a fantastic partner called Red Sun Farms. And we're doing it again this year as well.
We sold seeds to home gardeners. We did it direct through our website. And when we announced the seed sales, we had a nationwide article on NPR. So we were on the radio. were on all things considered. And when we did that, the most telling thing is I talked to the NPR reporter and she said, we put this on our Facebook page. We actually promoted it twice. And she said, we were all really nervous. Our editors said, okay, get ready. There's going to be backlash.
there's this big controversy, people are gonna be sending us hate mail. She said, first of all, we had massive engagement on the story, way more than usual stories. And it was overwhelmingly positive. 90 % of the comments were, hey, this is fantastic, we're so excited, finally, science is getting out there, I'm really excited about this product. And this is just a really clear example that there's...
there's a perception that other people don't want this technology. I'm fine with it, I'm worried that other people don't want it. And it's by and large a boogeyman. It's really not out there. And we had to be a little bit brave, we had to go out on a limb, we had to bring the product out to market and just ask, hey, who would like this, would people like it? And it turns out that the majority of people in the US want products like this.
Dr. Kevin Folta (21:59.109)
Okay. So how much of that educational aspect was intended? mean, was, was that because we're going to make purple tomatoes. Was it really to strive for something that would show a health benefit and then they found the health benefit and then said, okay, we got to market this to people or was it kind of a, let's use this as a vehicle for education because it opens itself up for them.
Nathan (22:23.412)
It's a little bit of both. The reality is if you put a flavor saver tomato out on the market and you put other, you know, there's other products that have been improved with biotechnology, whether that's traditional genetic engineering or whether that's CRISPR gene editing. I take a step back and I just watch what gets covered. And when there's conversations, what are the conversations that people have around products? And what's very clear is,
The purple tomato rises to the top because it's so different, people pay attention to it. And there's a logical benefit. So we did consumer research. We talked to 400 average people throughout the US, presented them the product concept and said, would you like this? Over 80 % said, yes, I want the purple tomato, knowing full well that it's bioengineered. And then you ask them,
Well, why would, why do you want it? What's the driver? And the overwhelming answer is the nutritional benefit, right? So there's a logical reason. I'm trying to take care of my body. I'm trying to care for my family. These are really important nutrients that improve our health. And so I want to go for this product because it has this tangible logical benefit. At the same time, it's sexy. You know, it's a beautiful product. It draws you in with emotional appeal. say, wow, that is so cool.
It's really interesting, it's really beautiful. I can make a compresa salad. I can make a ceviche dish, which I made for friends yesterday. Boy, that's really gonna pop and people are gonna say, how did you make this beautiful thing? What are those things? I've never seen contrast like this in a dish. And so it has that logical benefit that it's good for you. And it also has that irrational emotional draw of this is beautiful. I really want this. And then on top of that, it has this whole
taboo, interesting frontier of science discussion of, people thought that people thought GMOs are bad and here's this product that it seems like it's good. I don't know what to think. All of a sudden, all of a sudden I've got to All of a sudden I've got to say, well, why did I think GMOs are bad? And is this actually good? And my gosh, I'm kind of, I'm shaken up out of this. Well, you know, we always know it's this way.
Nathan (24:42.024)
And now we have an interesting conversation and an interesting discussion. And so those are sort of the three legs of the stool that really makes the purple tomato work. And so, yes, it's a piece of education. It is a legitimate product that delivers benefits in health to people. And it's just something that's really fun and light and sexy and interesting.
Dr. Kevin Folta (25:02.951)
No, very good. And I guess it's nice that we can always deal with education and informing the consumer and maybe make some inroads there. But the government's a little bit different. And when you look at regulatory around genetic engineering and you talk to the folks from Arctic Apple, you talk to the folks from Simplot about the white russet potato, and they talk about these onerous regulatory mazes they need to navigate in order to bring this to market.
But now here you are mailing transgenic seeds to people and what kind of regulatory issues are there around?
Nathan (25:36.596)
Also the immediate answer is with our seeds there's no regulatory issues. So we have completed the regulatory process that's needed in the US to bring the product to market. So we have been, we've completed the USDA process and as a lot of your listeners probably know, this means it's a non-regulated item. The way this works is if you make a genetically engineered plant, this is subject to certain regulations. You can't just grow it out into a field willy-nilly.
You need to grow it under containment. So this is at a university facility, at a commercial facility where nothing can get out into the outside environment. This allows you to develop a product, bring together a big data package. This then goes for review. So what the USDA determined is, our tomato isn't subject to any regulations beyond a normal tomato. So we can grow it like a normal tomato. We can deliver it like a normal tomato.
We also completed the FDA's biotechnology notification file process where they determined this tomato doesn't present any ricks that are different from any other kind of tomato. So where we are right now is within the US. It's a tomato like any other tomato. It's of course really important that people don't take any of the tomato or seeds outside of the US. And this is also true for any other tomatoes.
for phytosanitary reasons and a lot of other reasons. And so we are very careful to mark the tomato with terms and conditions saying this needs to stay in the US. I do wanna comment, there's the regulations around our purple tomato that we have right now. There's also what's the regulatory landscape that governs products like ours. And there's a lot of companies right now that are working to bring new products to market as you mentioned.
I really have an eye towards five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road, what is the regulatory scheme going to look like? I have a five-year-old and a two-year-old. think a lot about the world that they're gonna live in. And I'm really interested in how this is evolving. So, you know, I'm not fixated on the policy discussions of this year. We're a tiny little startup company. We have no ability to move the needle as far as lobbying for policy.
Nathan (27:57.012)
The best we can do is bring a great product out and show, hey, people really want this. The regulatory policies don't come out of nowhere. These are a response to public perceptions and what the voters want their government to do. And so what I'm really interested in is let's have a conversation with the broad market, with the broad public in the country and with voters and say, do you want this? Yes or no. And to me, that's the best way.
that we get to regulatory change is actually, you we start at the front.
Dr. Kevin Folta (28:28.997)
very good. We're speaking with Dr. Nathan Pumplin. He's the CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce. This is the Talking Biotech podcast by Calabra. and I made a mistake. This isn't the first consumer facing product, right? There was that pink pineapple. You know, that that came out and I kind of forgot about that. Well, at least the ones that were done with genetic engineering that that the pink pineapple seemed to be one that was that has no other.
Nathan (28:47.998)
There's many consumer facing products.
Dr. Kevin Folta (28:59.091)
utility other than, you know, the then be something cool on a plate. So but anyway, we'll come back after this break. So here we go. And then we go into a break here and everything good so far. Yeah, looks good. All right. So we'll pick up.
Nathan (29:12.478)
everything's good. You froze a bit on my end when you were saying like, okay, cool. You can always go over that.
Dr. Kevin Folta (29:15.303)
That's okay.
Dr. Kevin Folta (29:19.079)
Yeah, what happens is, well, what happens is it records on your side and records on my side locally and then uploads. So at the end, stay with me. And then this way we get two individual, Pete, that's the nice thing about the software, makes it much better than, you know, Zoom, which doesn't do that. So here we go. talk, yeah, we'll talk about the technology here. Here we go.
Nathan (29:26.988)
brilliant.
Nathan (29:34.598)
Yeah. Yeah. And Riverside is...
Dr. Kevin Folta (29:42.705)
And now we're back on the Talking Biotech podcast. We're speaking with Dr. Nathan Pumplin. He's the CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce. And we're talking about the purple tomato. And let's turn to the technology side. You mentioned the Snapdragon gene earlier, but how are these purple tomatoes different as a tomato from cultivars like Cherokee Purple or Oregon Spring, or some of the other ones that we sell at the farmers'
Nathan (30:09.844)
Yeah, so the first answer is by and large, our tomatoes are just a tomato. And I want to emphasize that point, right? So this is talking biotech. We're talking about how biotech is different. Even more important is our tomatoes are tomatoes. Tomatoes have 35,000 genes and our tomatoes have those genes like all other tomatoes. Now the purple pigment in our tomatoes,
it's the same purple pigment that's in an indigo rose that's in a Cherokee purple. These are anthocyanins. These are the class of purple pigments that make blueberries blue, that make eggplants colored, that make blackberries colored. And the types of, there's about 600 different types of anthocyanins that can accumulate in plants. And the types in our tomatoes, they're all the same. The main difference is
The ones developed through conventional breeding, like an indigo rose, these are activated by light. What that means is they're only synthesized in the skin, and they're only synthesized in tissue that has received a lot of light. So what this means is if you look at the tomato, usually the top will be a little bit purple, and the bottom will be red. And then you cut it in half, you look inside, and it's all red. Our purple tomatoes, instead of being activated by light,
They're activated by transcription factors that come from Snapdragon. Those transcription factors, and I'll get a little nerdy here, and I think from your listeners it's good. Those transcription factors are activated by a tomato promoter, which has activated itself during fruit ripening. So what that means is our purple pigment accumulates in response to development, in response to fruit ripening, not in response to environmental stimulus. So what this means is,
we get purple pigment accumulating throughout the whole fruit and we get higher levels of the purple pigment. And so this is really, it's an important takeaway that this is a natural pigment that accumulates in tomatoes. We're accumulating more of it because we're doing it in response to development. But it's really a very natural process that we've augmented through this engineering approach.
Dr. Kevin Folta (32:23.601)
Very cool. Now, how is this actually achieved? You mentioned that it's an addition of a transcription factor from Snapdragon. So was this done by adding something with agrobacterium or how did, how was that achieved?
Nathan (32:38.708)
Yep. So it was done by adding through agrobacterium. And, you know, again, most of your listeners are probably very familiar. Agrobacterium is a bacteria that evolved in nature to insert DNA into plants. So that's the way that it makes its living, so to speak. It reprograms cells of plants. So those plants make the food that it eats and makes a nice little home for it to live in. In the 1980s,
Biologists figured out what this process was purely through curiosity driven research. Hey, this is really interesting, huh? Then they figured out, okay, we could take the DNA that's in agrobacterium and we can put in DNA that's interesting to us and put that into plants. We use that nature-based process. That's what we did. And I should say that's what Cathy did in her lab about 18 years ago. One of the things that's really, really important, and you alluded to this earlier,
People often come to us and say, you're a biotechnology company. You do all this fancy genetic engineering. Well, really we're plant breeders. And really what we do is very, very basic. Cathy inserted the DNA into a tomato about 18 years ago and showed that you could get a purple tomato. Since then, what we've been doing is conventional plant breeding the same way that people have been doing for thousands of years.
We've been crossing with different tomatoes. We've been growing out populations. We've been looking at genetic diversity. We've been looking at segregation of different traits that really matter so that we could get purple tomatoes that taste good, that grow well, that are resistant to diseases. And this is a problem that people have made in biotechnology so much. They say, hey, we have science, we have technology. We don't need plant breeding. That's kind of beneath us. And that's completely wrong.
Biotechnology can be very powerful if it's in service of plant breeding, if it's in service of farmers, if it's in service of people who want to eat different foods. It doesn't work the other way around. And that's really been one of the cardinal sins I find in the history of developing products like this.
Dr. Kevin Folta (34:47.079)
Yeah, I agree. think too many folks who are in biotechnology have been such staunch advocates that they forget that adding a gene is a cherry on the Sunday. You're talking about 35,000 genes. You're affecting one trait. And so if you don't have a good genetic background, what good is that one extra trait? And I think maybe that was part of the flavor saver problem. But going back to this particular
innovation, what was the genetic background that is available? What is the genetic background right now that's available if a consumer buys one of your tomato products?
Nathan (35:22.964)
Yeah, so the varieties that people buy are varieties that we developed. So these are new varieties of tomatoes. The original tomato that was transformed is called Microtom. And again, some of your listeners probably know this. This is a dwarf tomato. It grows very fast. It's very often used in lab because it's easy to work with. It's also been sent onto the International Space Station because if you want to grow something in space, this is a compact plant. It's the easiest to do. It is not
commercially valuable in any kind of a way. They don't produce a of tomatoes. These are not tomatoes that you want to eat. And so for the last 18 years, what we've been doing is crossing that tomato with different types of commercially useful tomatoes to get now this new variety and a portfolio of new varieties that have good flavor, that have good production, that have good plant architecture, that have disease resistance. And so that's really the main part of what we do at Norfolk Healthy Produce.
We onboard tomato germplasm, we make a bunch of crosses, we grow them out and we evaluate what works and what doesn't. And again, you know, for those people who may be thinking about applying biotechnology to develop products, it's often framed as what genetic background did you use to put it in? And that's simply, it betrays a misunderstanding of how plant breeding works and how new varieties are developed. You never put it in a background and it's done.
You're always going to have to create genetic diversity and do evaluations. It's all about diversity and selection, and that's what we've been doing.
Nathan (37:29.865)
Thank
Dr. Kevin Folta (37:54.501)
See if you're there again. We should be... I think we are unstable.
How about now?
Dr. Kevin Folta (38:10.641)
Can I hear you? I can't hear you.
But I'm here speaking.
Everything looks good on this side.
Dr. Kevin Folta (38:24.347)
There you are. can see you now and hear you now. there you go again.
Dr. Kevin Folta (38:51.144)
OK, I think maybe we're good now, maybe. Can I can you hear me? All right. And we're we're good. We'll figure it. I mean, this will pitch stitch together without without a problem. So it's recording the next the next thing here. So. I got quite a bit on that last question about the background. I know the question I wanted to ask you next, and you can say no if you don't want to answer it. So so here we go. Well, that's pretty exciting that you've been
Nathan (38:54.708)
All right, you look good.
Nathan (39:02.739)
Excellent.
Dr. Kevin Folta (39:20.722)
breeding your own cultivars that contain this gene. But know, Florida presents some unique problems that really we've required tomatoes in Florida to be bred specifically for Florida with certain resistances, et cetera. And have you bred it into any of those backgrounds?
Lost a
Nathan (39:43.124)
So we're breeding it into a few different backgrounds that are our top areas for releasing commercial varieties. we have two areas. You back. Okay. We have two areas that we're specifically focused on breeding for. One is high-tech greenhouse production. That is where the majority of fresh market tomatoes come from.
Dr. Kevin Folta (39:55.268)
Okay.
Nathan (40:12.656)
If you go to a grocery store and you buy tomatoes, this is by and large where the bulk of them are coming from in the U.S. The other is processing tomatoes. I'm based here in Davis, California. We're in the middle of the main production area for tomatoes that go into shelf stable products. And this is an area that has a really big opportunity to deliver anthocyanin nutrients to people in a way that's cost effective. So those are two of the top targets we're breeding for.
And naturally you need a whole host of traits of attributes in those varieties. We are working a little bit with material that's adapted to Florida. We're also working with material that's adapted to open field production or low tech high tunnel production in the Northeast, in the Midwest. And we're doing that both through work that we're doing within the company and collaborations with other breeders that are operating in the U.S.
Nathan (41:13.075)
And I'll just.
Nathan (41:21.396)
I'll add the sound bite for you.
Nathan (41:28.724)
So our business model is to get purple tomatoes out to where people can grow them and consume them and appreciate them. And so we're doing a mix of in-house development and collaboration with other breeders and out-licensing.
Nathan (42:15.732)
So what I can say is the first studies were done in cancer-prone mice, so not a human model, and in these it showed that cancer-prone mice lived 30 % longer relative to mice that received a diet with red tomatoes or the control with no tomatoes. So this was already very striking. There's a number of health studies that are now ongoing and scientists who have applied for grants to do human studies directly with purple tomatoes.
And the thing that we know, and I want to be really clear on this, purple tomatoes are not some kind of a silver bullet. They're not magic above and beyond other fruits and vegetables that have anthocyanins. What's very clearly very good for our health and wellbeing is eating the rainbow, eating a range of different fresh fruits and vegetables that have these beneficial nutrients. And so there's a host of benefits that come with
eating anthocyanins. These go to anti-cancer properties, lung health, brain health. There's actually a group right behind us at UC Davis who works on biomarkers for brain health in response to anthocyanin and they see very clear effects there.
Nathan (43:36.244)
So Kevin, I kept answering the question. I'm thinking that'll go up.
Dr. Kevin Folta (44:53.875)
Okay. Let's try. I've never had it be this, this bad before. think it's because of the weather. So, um, I switched to it. Well, I switched to a different thing. I have a internet tower in the back of the house that gets to the whole farm. So I switched to that one that may give us a little more stability. So what we'll do is, um, I got everything that I have, everything that you said, um, let me go ahead and continue. We're almost getting through it. We'll get through it. We'll make it happen. Here we go.
Nathan (45:01.083)
storm.
Nathan (45:13.223)
Sound good.
Dr. Kevin Folta (45:25.591)
One of the things I've learned about the process is that individuals who get the seeds from you are not allowed to sell the seeds or the products. So why is that kind of policy in place?
Nathan (45:41.375)
So there's two main reasons that when we sell seeds to home gardeners, we have the policy that there's no commercial rights with those seeds. The first is the purple tomato as we're launching it is really a premium product. It's proprietary product that we develop and we're working to make sure that the product that gets to consumers is really a fantastic one that delights consumers. So we work with farmers and nurseries on a commercial license model basis.
And I encourage anyone who's listening to this, who's interested to sell fruit, to sell seedlings, to reach out to us at our website. You can see very easily the instructions for how to become a licensed grower. We would love to work with you. We have a lot of growers we're working with already to get products out into markets, out into the hands of consumers and in the plates of consumers. The other reason is because the purple tomato is bio-engineered, there's a certain set of restrictions around
moving the material and we want to make sure that we can convey that message with fidelity. And so this helps us by having those terms and conditions for the home gardeners, this helps make it clear that these tomatoes need to stay in the U.S. We do encourage gardeners to share tomatoes, share seedlings with their communities, with their family, with their friends. This is obviously an important cornerstone part of being a gardener and we very much encourage that.
And I do want to throw out one of our inspirations for this model is the Grateful Dead and the taping of concerts and the trading of those tapes. And we see a direct connection of gardeners saving seeds, trading the seeds with their friends. You know, we encourage the responsible use of that as long as they're following the conditions.
Dr. Kevin Folta (47:29.499)
Okay, that's interesting. So the company is Norfolk Healthy Produce, not Norfolk Healthy Tomatoes. So I'm assuming that there is other opportunities in the pipeline for other fruits and vegetables. So what else is going to be purple in the near future?
Nathan (47:46.974)
Yeah, so it's a great question. We always get this. There's a few purple things we're working on. The top of the list is purple peppers. This is kind of the no-brainer. And we're very, very focused right now in the company of getting better types of purple tomatoes out onto the market and making sure that we really have a solid foundation with the purple tomato portfolio. From there, we take a step back and we say, you know,
We're not the purple tomato company. We're not the purple company. And we're also not the GMO company. We are a company that is a leading voice in the conversation around how are we using technology to make our farming systems better? How are we using technology to make our food better? What is it that people actually want? And so we're actually at the point of doing a lot of listening, right? This is not for scientists to say, we want to push this out into the world. We now have a wonderful opportunity.
to listen to people who like purple tomatoes and ask them, hey, what else would you like? What are the other things that you would like? And what we hear is people really want foods that deliver better nutrition. And there's all sorts of things that fit into people's lives. People want more sustainable foods. They want less food waste. And so people will say, for instance, could you give me a tomato that has longer shelf life that delivers vitamin D?
that delivers omega-3 fatty acids, that delivers vitamin A. These are the kind of things that people are interested in, and we are interested in delivering. And so a lot of these can be done not with biotechnology traits, but with conventional breeding. And we have this very unique opportunity. We're a little weird. You know, we're not afraid of doing something different. And so we can launch products onto the market that a typical seed company wouldn't be able to launch.
because they don't fit into the established mold. And so, you know, I'll be really proud if five years, 10 years, we have another conversation and you say, boy, you know, Norfolk Healthy Produce is the company that's able to launch these products that seem very weird and very strange and very fringe. And my gosh, they move into the mainstream because it turns out that's something that a lot of consumers really want. And that want and desire wasn't recognized by the mainstream market.
Dr. Kevin Folta (50:07.453)
you're talking a lot about how the company is different and the philosophy is different. The products are cool. it seems like a place where a lot of people would say, you know, if I'm going to have a career in biotechnology, I want to work for a place like that. So if you had some advice for students or postdocs that were studying in biotechnology who might want to maybe tailor their resume to fit in a place like Norfolk healthy produce, what should they do?
Nathan (50:32.159)
That's an excellent question, Kevin. And I love the question. I need to preface it and say, I am here thanks to dozens of phenomenal mentors and advisors and coaches and colleagues that I've worked with over the last 20 years. And I'm forever grateful to all of these people. And all I can do is pay it forward. So I would say a few kernels of advice. One, ask questions. Be very curious.
Take initiative, don't be shy. If you don't understand something or if you come across something new, pull that thread, chase it down. Ask people, question. The other thing is get domain expertise, get specialization, but don't get too focused too narrowly on one area. I think it's really important to understand context. And so for instance,
Get really good at biotechnology, understand molecular biology, but don't think that that's all you need to know. Understand how that fits into breeding, understand how that fits into farming, understand how that fits into commerce. That I think is really important to have people who can go a bit broad. And then the last thing, and this is someone who's studying biotechnology. When I was a student, there were things called the soft skills.
You've got to learn the science, you've got to do the experiments. And sometimes there's this leadership stuff or there's this teamwork stuff. it sounds like a lot of hooey, I used to think this. It's really important for students to understand how groups of people work together. How can you come to a group with a ton of humility, with an attitude that says, how can we have the emergent output of the group do better? What is it gonna take?
And I think students who pick that up and again, I'm so grateful for people who kind of opened my eyes and opened my mind and opened my heart to these directions. This is extremely valuable. know, people who can build bridges, people who can look at and say, okay, if we're going to succeed at biotechnology at this new product, we need a lot of people to come together and do a lot of things really, really well.
Nathan (52:44.242)
And that only works if you have a cohesive group of people coming together. And so there's tons of resources and tons of tools out there. And for those students and people earlier in their career, you cannot over-invest in that, I promise you.
Dr. Kevin Folta (52:57.565)
No, very good. I find that soft skills can sometimes be the hardest. And I know so many scientists over the years, I'm sure you've met them too, where if they would have had a little bit better soft skills, their careers would have been probably very different. And, you know, I don't need to name names, but, but, but, but yeah.
Nathan (53:02.992)
Indeed.
Nathan (53:19.006)
Well, it takes a village. It takes a village. And so we need all different types of people. And I think what's really fun in science is you see that.
Dr. Kevin Folta (53:29.565)
Yeah, very good. Well, if people want to learn more about a purple tomato or if they want to maybe order some seeds, how do they do it?
Nathan (53:38.559)
So really easy to find us. Look up on Google Norfolk Healthy Produce. You'll get to our website very soon. There's a product page where you can order our seeds. So I do need to say our 2025 seed sales are underway right now. The next two months is really when most people are thinking about planting their gardens. So please do check out our website for that. If you're interested in growing seedlings for sale or tomatoes for sale, you can find the information to become a licensed grower.
We are on social media, mostly on Instagram and Facebook. You'll find that under Big Purple Tomato. And there's also links to that in our website. Our website has a ton of information also on the science that went into the product, frequently asked questions. And if you'd like to learn more, please don't hesitate, reach out to us. We respond to everyone at least once and we love to hear feedback. We love to hear questions and really understand, you know, what everyone out there is thinking.
Dr. Kevin Folta (54:35.005)
Very good. Well, usually I would quit here, but I'll ask you one more question. And do you think we really have turned a corner with respect to the dreaded GMO Spectre?
Nathan (54:46.738)
Yes, and I think the important thing is what do you mean by we? So the general public really doesn't care. And I think that's the important thing to remember. Most people in the public, they don't care if they're eating a GMO or not. What they care is, is it a better product? And is this good for my family? And can I afford it? And is it going to go bad after I buy it? And so I think it's really important that we are clear on who it is that we're serving.
You know, why do we get up in the morning and go to work and, and whose lives are we trying to make better? And are we really, performing a generous act and is this benefiting people? And so yes, absolutely. We're at the point, where there's products out on the market that people are choosing, right? People have a choice and they're choosing the pink pineapple. They're choosing the purple tomato. It's going to take a few years for this really to play out and build momentum.
What we're seeing very clearly is there's a ton of momentum. It's much more than anyone expected. And now, we get to keep telling the story. We get to keep developing products and build and make progress.
Dr. Kevin Folta (55:58.365)
Very good. Well, thank you very much for joining me, Nathan. I really appreciate it and look forward to seeing you here in Gainesville in a couple of weeks.
Nathan (56:06.13)
I look forward to being there, Kevin, and meeting in person. Thanks a bunch.
Dr. Kevin Folta (56:10.131)
Yeah, this is great. And so anyone listening, make sure that you're ordering some seeds. They're available on the website and you can grow your own, which you can use to educate people in your network, showing them through your social media, show them, they're dazzling tomatoes. They look great in a salad. I grew some last year, but you can use them to educate your network and familiarize people with the idea of technology that if you can increase the amount of healthy compounds in a tomato,
Imagine what else you could do as we could expand this technology into other opportunities. And that's why we're here at the Talking Biotech podcast to communicate about ways we can help people and the planet with biotechnology. Thank you for listening to the Talking Biotech podcast by Calabra, and we'll talk to you again next week. And then stay with me just a bit here while we upload.