Most “seedless” fruits are not, in fact, actually seedless. In the classical example of the Watermelon, you can actually see this–most will have little white seed husks that you can find where the seeds would normally be, that are edible and you can eat along with the flesh largely without noticing. In this and most cases of seedless fruits, what they actually are is under-ripe–strains that have been cultivated to be tasty earlier in the development of the fruit, and put resources into developing seeds later on, so the grower can harvest some plants early as “seedless” variants, and then later harvest the normal crop and use seeds from those fully developed fruits to plant the next generation.
Trees, interestingly, are the one place where this can actually be not the case (although it often still is): most fruit trees are clones of single individuals, grown from cuttings of the original tree and propagated that way. Since they’re rarely grown from seed (and in fact doing so is unlikely to result in a fruit as good as the one the tree you have has), you can have a continuing population of “seedless” fruits from a tree because, basically, humans are circumventing the natural reproduction mechanism entirely. I’m not aware of any situations where this is the case off hand, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they exist. I know there’s cases, for example, where some tree strains actually have to be grafted onto different strains of tree because the genetics they have for trunk development will not support the amount and volume of branches and fruit the tree is able to produce.
Actual ELI5: most seedless fruit is just under-ripe fruit, not from a seedless fruit plant.
Tree trunks have a lifespan. However, cuttings are younger and can live longer.
You can clone plants easily.
Trees actually have a really long life time if you give them everything they need.
So, they breed a plant that gives seedless fruits. Then they clone those them by taking cuttings and grow new plants out of them.
Other people below have covered fruits like watermelons. Seedless grapes though–I researched this and this is what I found: seedless grape varieties are propagated via cuttings. I’ve done this myself, in some cases it’s as simple as cutting off a branch with three buds on it and sticking it in the ground, and waiting for it to grow roots and become a vine. Also, apparently “seedless” grapes still have seeds sometimes, they’re just (mostly) soft so they’re not an issue to eat. I’m not sure if they’re viable or not, but it still allows for some cross-breeding of “seedless” grape varieties.
So, seed is one of many many different ways for plants to grow.
Very commonly? these are just grown via cuttings – that is, to take a cutting off of another plant and then it can grow from there. If you are familiar with the fairy tale “Aschenputtel” (Cinderella) wherein the title character asks her father for a branch which she then puts on her mother’s grave? Yeah – it’s kind of like that. So in other terms? Cloning. The resulting plant is genetically identical to the one you took it from.
Another common method of propagation is grafting. The most common form is when you take the top of a plant (the scion) to the lower portion (the understock) and join them together. A lot of fruit trees do just this.
Ordinarily? it’s both.
So tldr? Cloning.
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