The project was started because they considered the tomato the most innocuous thing present in the household. One guy disliked tomatoes and did not eat them at the time ... but now eats a lot of Caprese salads with tomatoes, another made nothing with them, and the third, the director, John DeBello had no recipes for them, but knows every tomato joke under the Sun because he likes 2nd grade level humor:

I don’t have any tomato recipes. But at this point, I’ve heard every tomato joke every told. The intellectual level of tomato jokes is usually about second grade. Here’s one of the oldest, though, along with the chicken crossing the road: What’d one tomato say to the other tomato?
Ketchup.

All were military, and one had a friend or relative that called something used in target practice "the killer tomato". About the only link these three had to agriculture was that they had a liberal arts education, worked in sports, and the link ... they went to UC Davis (probably has the largest genetic resources of tomato in any one place in the world, but they probably had no clue about it) and made their prototype short of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes for a class on films, when trying to think of the stupidest title possible.

PC