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Scientists Create 'No Tears' Onion

No more tears in the kitchen

February 1, 2008
You may be looking at an option of buying an onion that doesn't make you cry.

A group of scientists from New Zealand and Japan made a presentation with that sensational claim on Thursday at the 5th International Symposium on Edible Alliceae being held in The Netherlands.

Crop & Food Research, a self-described "food innovation center" repeated such claims on its website on Friday.

According to Dr. Colin Eady, a research scientist with the institute, the "tear-free" onion was "created using biotechnology that switches off the gene behind the enzyme that makes us cry."

"We previously thought the tearing agent was produced spontaneously by cutting onions, but they proved it was controlled by an enzyme," he said in press interviews published today.

Explaining further, he said: "Here in New Zealand we had the ability to insert DNA into onions, using gene-silencing technology developed by Australian scientists...The technology creates a sequence that switches off the tear-inducing gene in the onion so it does not produce the enzyme. So when you slice the vegetable, it doesn't produce tears."

Eady added that "by stopping Sulphur compounds from being converted to the tearing agent and redirecting them into compounds responsible for flavour and health, the process could even improve the taste of the onion."

The institute, which began investigating this possibility in 2002, said the 'tearless onion' was in a developmental phase and he expects, if all goes to plan, that the invention would become a household name within the next decade.

Back at the conference in The Netherlands, an international onion trade journal, Onion World -- not to be confused with the online publication The Onion -- featured Dr Eady's work on the front cover of its final issue for 2007.

The magazine quotes Dr. Michael J. Havey, Professor of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin and USDA research geneticist, who is a world-renowned onion scientist, as predicting that tearless onions will become a mainstay in household kitchens around the world. He said Dr Eady's work was "clearly the No. 1 topic of discussion at the 5th International Symposium."

To follow the progress on the 'tearless onion' log on to www.crop.cri.nz/.

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