By Samantha Semoso – EM TV Online
Green-fingered gardeners in America are already growing purple carrots, yellow courgettes and white asparagus.
But in the latest colour swap food craze, black tomatoes are the must-have crop for greenhouses this season, growers say.
According to scientists, not only are the black tomatoes turning heads in the allotment society, but are also healthier than the normal red varieties.
On sale for the first time this year, the black tomato or ‘Indigo Rose’ as it is being called, was cultivated by breeding red and purple tomato plants.
There are some dark coloured tomatoes but Indigo Rose is the only real black tomato and is the darkest that has ever been bred.
The breeding was done by Professor, Jim Myers, at the University of Oregon in the US and came about only after a graduate student was interested in looking at the health benefits in tomatoes.
‘During the growth process, it starts out green like all tomatoes but when the sun hits the fruit it turns black rather than red.’ Demand for the vegetable seeds and plants have soared, and Devon based Sutton Seeds has secured the rights to start selling the plants overseas.
These rare coloured crops are fetching high prices in supermarkets and gardeners are increasingly planting them in huge numbers.
