THE SOBBING OF a chef as he chops onions in the kitchen could be a thing of the past thanks to one Japanese company, which says it has produced a tear-free vegetable.

Scientists say they have managed to disable the production of a powerful substance an onion releases as the knife slices into it, cutting down on the pungent fumes that bring tears to the eyes.

House Foods Group said in a press release that they bombarded the brown bulb with irradiating ions in a process that drastically reduces the level of a certain enzyme that is key to this process.

A spokesman said no decision had yet been made on whether they would commercialise their tear-free onions.

The company’s researchers won the Ig Nobel Prize – an award handed out to honour achievements organisers consider unintentionally funny – in 2013 for their discovery of the biochemical process behind how onions make people blubber.

- © AFP 2015