Gene-edited food is coming to Britain

The tomatoes look like any other. But unlike those which sit on supermarket shelves, they are a source of vitamin d. That is owing to the clever work of scientists at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, who have used gene-editing techniques to boost the tomatoes’ nutritional value. By making small deletions in the plant’s genome they blocked the production of a certain enzyme, prompting the plants to accumulate provitamin d3. This in turn is converted to vitamin d on exposure to ultraviolet light, such as that found in sunlight. A single upgraded tomato could provide around 20% of the recommended daily intake of the vitamin.