i enjoyed this comment about the story on reddit: Thoughts from a chemist here. Orange carrots express beta carotene, purple carrots express anthocyanins, red

i enjoyed this comment about the story on reddit: Thoughts from a chemist here. Orange carrots express beta carotene, purple carrots express anthocyanins, red carrots express lycopene in addition to some alpha- and beta-carotenes, and white carrots express few or no pigments. I believe one way to produce an orange carrot from the conventional horticulture of purple, red, and white carrots, is to supress lycopene production in red carrots, leaving just carotene. Another way would be to take a faint orange (perhaps technically white) carrot and cause it to express those orange pigments at the high levels that purple carrots do.