We have seedless grapes, oranges, and watermellon… but is that the limit to our “seedless technology”? Around Halloween, some seedless pumpkins would be awfully handy.

Question

We have seedless grapes, oranges, and watermellon… but is that the limit to our “seedless technology”? Around Halloween, some seedless pumpkins would be awfully handy.

In: Biology

Answer 1

Plants generally need seeds to make more plants. If you somehow manage to create a version without seeds, the genetic line stops there.

So our two strategies for creating seedless plants are either to carefully tend existing seedless plants (like grapes and oranges, where parts can be cut and grafted into new environments), or trick plants with seeds into sometimes producing seedless offspring (like watermelon, where cross-breeding two different varieties generates seedless offspring). We’ve figured out how to do this for only a small set of plants and may never discover techniques for some.