No tears, no taste? Naturally bred tearless onions sparks debate

“Tearless” onions have made it to New Zealand, now being grown in Auckland and sold nationwide.

Woolworths New Zealand launched its Happy Chop tearless brown onions to stores on June 16, marketing the new product as “an onion designed for everyone who loves the flavour but not the tears”.

Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan tried the onions live on air, chopping one up, holding it close to her face, and even testing it on her tastebuds.

“If you love your onion taste, I don’t think this is a winner,” du Plessis-Allan said.

While the naturally crossbred variety will be new to Kiwi shoppers, the world’s first tearless onions were developed in Canterbury by a group of New Zealand and Japanese agricultural researchers in 2007.

Related on the SLP

South African chain’s committment to reduce GMOs doesn’t impress activists ‘Sweet and mild’: Non-GMO ‘tearless’ onion goes on sale in the UK after decades in development

Viewpoint: RFK Jr. touts AI to guide health care…but searches using the technology he champions expose him as scientifically illiterate

Viewpoint: ‘Bureaucratic and economic obstacles’ to agricultural biotechnology: Europe creeps into the 21st century, but blocks remain

Viewpoint: How the anti-abortion movement twists medical facts and promotes science misinformation

Scientists who worked with Dommisse at Crop & Food used gene-silencing techniques for their research.

Gene silencing works to effectively “turn off” a gene – in the tearless onions case, the one responsible for the enzyme that makes you cry when slicing onions.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here