Shifting into high gear Researchers working to come up with the next generation of auto materials

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Sometime in the mid-1990s,when Katrina Cornish was living in California and working for the U.S.Department of Agriculture,she saw a load of freshly picked tomatoes in a hopper being transported from a farm on the back of a truck.Cornish,who has a doctorate in plant biology from the University of Birmingham in England,didn't view that load of tomatoes as most people would.She wondered instead about the tomatoes on the bottom of the container and realized that the skins would have to be pretty tough to handle that much stress.Flash forward nearly a quarter-century.Cornish is now a professor at Ohio State University and an international authority on alternative natural rubber production,properties and products,as well as rubber biosynthesis.She never forgot those tomatoes,and because of her pioneering research,it's very possible that tomato skins could end up in your next car.Tomato skins could replace a portion of the environmentally dirty carbon black found in the rubber used in suspension bushings,motor mounts,tires,hoses and elsewhere on the car.