April 16, 2026
Contact: Janese Heavin, heavinj@missouri.edu
Photo by Roger Meissen
One day, the tomato on your burger could deliver a surprisingly healthy kick of heat.
University of Missouri researchers are exploring how to unlock that potential by tapping into a hidden capability within tomatoes. The fruit already has the genes needed to produce the spicy compound found in their close cousins, chili peppers. But for some reason, tomatoes aren’t producing capsaicin, the chemical compound that activates nerve cells in the tongue to create a sensation of heat.
Kishan Biradar, a doctoral student in plant, insect and microbial sciences, is trying to find out why. He’s studying the biosynthesis pathways across different tomato varieties to map the step-by-step process that should lead to capsaicin production — and pinpoint where it stops.
By overexpressing key genes within that process, eventually tomatoes will start producing capsaicin.
“That’s the hypothesis,” Biradar said. “But before we get to that point, we want to understand and quantify the pathway in detail and identify where intervention is possible.”
Biradar will present his preliminary findings at Show Me Research Week. More than 130 undergraduate and graduate student teams will showcase their work through poster and oral presentations Monday through Wednesday at Memorial Student Union North, with other events at various locations all week.
Now in his third year, Biradar recently joined Mizzou with Erin Sparks, an associate professor in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources who also has an appointment in the Bond Life Sciences Center and a joint appointment at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis. He’s excited about collaborating with other scientists across campus, including the Mizzou Interdisciplinary Plant Group.
“I hope once I’m established here, I can find some potential collaborators moving forward with my project,” he said.
Expanding possibilities
Applications of Biradar’s research could span well beyond the kitchen.
Compared to chili peppers, tomatoes produce much higher yields and are easier to modify using biotechnology.
Once Biradar identifies what’s happening on a cellular level, the next step will be to determine how to engineer a new type of tomato capable of producing capsaicin.
The compound has demonstrated anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, and has been linked to weight loss and cancer prevention. It’s also widely used in products such as pain relief treatments and pepper spray.
“If we are able to take pathways from one plant and express them into another plant, that opens up a lot of other opportunities,” Biradar said. “That presents a unique opportunity to use plants as biofactories to produce more of these beneficial compounds.”
Those compounds could be tailored for other nutritional, medical and industrial needs, opening new markets and driving economic development.
Biradar is hopeful that those stopping by his poster next week will see how the lab is translating foundational science into real-world applications. That’s the beauty of research, he said.
“It gives you a lot of freedom to explore new ideas,” he said. “It also helps you develop a lot of skills that apply across many fields. I hope undergraduates see that doing research is very exciting.”
