eli5: Why do certain fruits keep growing, even though we have genetically modified many fruits not to have seeds?
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Seedless fruits are produced several ways. One way is to cross two different species to make a hybrid that has no seeds (like crossing a donkey and a horse to get a sterile mule).
Another way is to take branches from a plant that has seedless fruit and graft them onto another plant. You have seedless oranges and want more? Cut a twig from the seedless orange tree and make a cut in a different tree to inset the twig into. Cover the cut and use string to hold the twig in place, and it “scans over” becomes part of the other tree where it grows into a branch that produces the same fruit (you can even graft multiple kinds of fruit the same tree).
Another way is simply planting cuttings from seedless varieties (like grapes).
Genetic engineering is not used, if that’s what you are asking. People learned to propagate seedless varieties of fruits during the Roman empire, and we still look for naturally seedless crosses of varieties and propagate them the same ways.
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