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'The coverage,' Prof Cathie Martin recalls now: 'Days and days and days and days of it.' She and the other scientists who produced the purple tomato with high levels of anthocyanins were unprepared for the interest in their innovation — and the backlash that was to follow. Picture: John Innes Centre/Getty

On a cold December day in Norwich, England, Cathie Martin met me at a laboratory inside the John Innes Centre, where she works.

A plant biologist, Professor Martin has spent almost two decades studying tomatoes, and I had travelled to see her because of a particular one she created — a lustrous, dark purple variety that is unusually high in antioxidants, with twice the amount found in blueberries.