Scientists in New Zealand and Japan have created a “tear-free” onion using biotechnology to switch off the gene behind the enzyme that makes us cry, one of the leading researchers said Friday.

Apparently they hope to bring the no tear onion to the marketplace within 10 years, so don’t look for it anytime soon. The gene slicing technology they used to do this can be used to combat viruses and produce more robust crops.

A tear free onion might sound good, but how does it taste? It seems when products are tinkered with they lose that certain something that makes them work. My Mom was telling me about how apple growers had tinkered with their apples to get ones with a lot of color. They wound up burning them because they had no taste.

Shedding a few tears to have a nice, tasty onion in our foods is really not a big deal. Guess we’ll just have to wait a few years until we know the answer.