No More Tears : High Tech Onion Scientists Ignore Low-Tech Solution

Scientists in New Zealand have developed an onion, they claim, doesn't cause tears when you slice it :

...they have developed a tearless onion by switching off the gene behind the enzyme that makes us cry at the chopping board. The tearless onion appears just like the ordinary garden variety vegetable but has been engineered not to disturb the lachrymal glands of the eye, which secrete tears.

Or you can just keep your normal onions in the fridge instead. That works fine. The tearless onions are more than a decade away.

Here's my favourite part of the story :

The international trade journal Onion World devoted a cover story to the tearless onion. It quoted Michael Harvey, a horticultural professor at the University of Wisconsin, as saying that the onions will become the fare of kitchen tables around the world.

Onion World! A magazine devoted to onions!

And here it is :



Unfortunately, I couldn't find a trade journal devoted exclusively to broccoli. A gap in the publishing market?