Years before Frankenfoods became the subject of debate at your local market, Northeastern researchers were trying to perfect produce.

Their experiments stemmed from concerns that bedevil greengrocers to this day: how to get tomatoes into consumers' hands at just the right degree of ripeness while minimizing the financial losses created by spoilage.

So biology professor A. Karim Khudairi (center) and graduate students Jueson Maeng (left) and A. Thomas Johnnykutty attempted to control the pace of ripening by injecting tomatoes with plant hormones. The National Science Foundation seeded this research with a $15,000 grant—not exactly small potatoes.

In all, Khudairi spent seven years developing his methods, which centered on manipulating substances already present in the tomato plants. One hormone, gibberellin, kept the fruit green; another, abscisic acid, hastened ripening.

Khudairi's approach was an improvement over an earlier technique: treating tomatoes with the chemical ethylene. The ethylene had to be used in such concentrated amounts that it sometimes exploded. (On the bright side, that did lead to one fast marinara.)

Today, food scientists are trying to nudge tomatoes to an ideal blush through genetic modifications. Fortunately, the risk of explosion is still small.

— Magdalena Hernandez, MBA'02