Genetic modification of plants and crops has long been touted as a means of producing hypoallergenic foods, but real progress in this area is limited by overcoming the ”essential requirement for some of the major allergenic proteins for normal plant function,” wrote Mohan Singh and Prem Bhalla from the University of Melbourne. [...] ”The transgenic plants exhibited severe growth retardation along with yield reduction, however, and some transgenic lines did not bear any fruit. ”These results highlight the obstacles in removing certain plant allergenic proteins that perform essential cellular housekeeping functions,” they added.