AgbioInvestor’s free-to-access service AgbioInvestor GM Monitor has identified the following GM trait approvals up to September 2025. Expanded details on these recently approved traits, as well as for approvals dating back as far as 1992, can be found on AgbioInvestor’s GM Monitor website.

Norfolk Plant Sciences’ purple tomato Del/Ros1-N (COR-23134-4) has been granted cultivation approval in Canada, as well as use in food. The Del/Ros1-N genetic event consists of two genes, Delila (Del) and Rosea1 (Ros1-N), from the snapdragon plant Antirrhinum majus. These genes encode transcription factors Del and Ros1 encode the amino acids bHLH and R2R3 respectively. When present in fruit they activate the endogenous anthocyanin as the fruit ripens, producing natural blue pigments and resulting in purple skin and flesh.

The genetic event was inserted through agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation using T-DNA containing the desired genetic information to transfer the two segments of T-DNA into host cells, following which successful genetic transformation was screened for using a selectable marker, the neomycin phosphotransferase (NPTII) protein from Escherichia coli. However, through several rounds of breeding, one of these inserts was segregated away, resulting in tomato lines containing a single copy of T-DNA (three expression cassettes) at a single genomic insertion site. The introduced genetic elements were shown by molecular techniques and phenotypic analyses to be present within a single locus and stably inherited across multiple generations.

Del/Ros1-N, which confers increased levels of anthocyanins, is not the first instance of GM technology being used in tomatoes; tomatoes were one of the first crops to have GM technology incorporated into it with Calgene’s Flavr Savr, engineered to resist the softening process post-harvest and stay fresh for a longer, being the first commercially grown GM tomato. It was first sold in 1994, but production ceased in 1997 around the time Monsanto acquired Calgene and all of its products. Output traits most commonly used in tomatoes are involved in delayed ripening or delayed fruit softening, but Canda and the USA have also approved an event that offers increased polyphenolic antioxidants in tomato fruit in 2024 and one that confers insect resistance in 1998 and 2000 which has not seen much further development.

Del/Ros1-N first received Food/Feed approval in the USA in 2023, with these recent Food and Cultivation approvals in Canada keeping the trait confined to North America. Outside of North America Norfolk Plant Sciences has recently applied to the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) for a permit for the use and sale of food derived from, and for commercially release, of its GM Purple Tomato in Australia (see AgbioNews Jul 31, 2025).