New research: – It notices onions when you cut it

Have you ever thought about whether or not your vegetables have noticed that they are being chopped?

According to researchers at Lund University in Skåne, onions can feel like they’re being chopped. Reported by the news agency TT, reproduced by the Swedes Aftonbladet.

In a new study published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal science progressSwedish researchers explain what happens in plants when they are exposed to external stimuli.

Or quite simply: what happens when we cut onions. Or tomatoes, for that matter.

responds to touch

It has long been known that plants react by various mechanisms when touched.

For example, a plant standing on top of a windy hill becomes shorter and more stable so that it can withstand the wind without breaking.

In the study, the Swedish researchers explained that external stimuli can lead to rapid changes in gene expression and affect the appearance and flowering of the plant.

“Some plants, such as Mimosa or Venus flytrap, have specialized sensor cells that help them respond to touch with incredible speed,” they wrote.

This also means, according to the researchers, that plants can sense when we cut them. It activates thousands of genes that in turn trigger the stress response.

Don’t feel pain

If you are now worried about damaging your onions, biologist Oliver van Aken can assure you that he does not feel pain.

– When you cut an onion, it may not shriek, but it certainly feels something, he tells TT news agency.

To reach this conclusion, the researchers looked closely at primrose growth (Arabidopsis thaliana).

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In the experiments, they cleaned the flower with a small, soft brush.

Thousands of genes were activated and stress hormones were released in primrose when we cleaned it up. Then we ran a genetic test to find out which genes were responsible for this process, says Van Aken.

new results

If a plant gets this kind of touch every day, it will eventually react to getting smaller and tighter.

What the research team was able to identify are three new proteins that play an important role in plants when they are touched.

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It would be a previously unknown signaling pathway, which controls the plants’ response to physical contact and touch.

All plants need this mechanism to survive. Even plants in the fields. In parallel, we are studying the same function in cereals, Van Aken tells the news agency.

The research team now hopes that the studies will be able to lead to more sustainable cultivation methods.