A team of Scientists at Jerusalem has developed violet color potatoes. Betalain pigments cause violent colour. These potatoes are more nutritious as compared to normal potatoes. The newly developed varieties are more resistant to gray mold disease by 90% which is the major cause of crop loss.
The research team included Noam Grossman, Yonghui Dong, Margarita Pliner, and Ilana Rogachev of Weizmann’s Plant and Environmental Sciences Department and Maggie Levy, David Vela-Corcia and Adi Nudel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The scientists engineered the new variety by extracting betalains from cactus as well as flowers like bougainvillea and applying RNA sequencing and other advanced technologies to develop previously unknown gene, which is later adapted to create those particular pigments without altering the color of leaves but of the fruit.
The Betalain pigments containing potatoes are high in anti-oxidants food and they are beautiful because of the purple color of skin and flesh, moreover, it gives a lot of awesome benefits from working as a healthy food-coloring agent to helping regulate blood pressure to aiding athletic performance and more. Violet potatoes have subtle flavor as compared to normal potatoes
