The Blessing of Fruit Without Seeds

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One of the minor blessings to come from botanists is the advent of seedless fruit.  Delicious seedless Navel oranges are mutants that showed up unexpectedly in a monastery garden in Brazil around 1820.  A bud from a mutant was grafted on to another tree, whose branches were then grafted on to another and so on - so that every Naval orange is derived from the original mutation.

Seedless grapes have been cultivated for hundreds of years.  Now with advances in genetic engineering, a variety of other seedless fruit is becoming available.

Seedless watermelons are at last a reality, after over fifty years of research.  The seedless watermelon plants require pollen from a regular seeded watermelon.  Often seeded and seedless plants are cultivated close together, so that bees can pollinate the seedless plants.  Because the seedless watermelon is sterile, the white seed pod in seedless watermelon doesn't harden and grow.

Soon it will be possible to have seedless fruit from almost any species as genetic engineers find new ways to incorporate genes into plants to make the fruit seedless.  One way to trick plants into making fruit without fertilization of the flower ovary is by genetically engineering them to produce a plant hormone which is normally produced only after fertilization of an ovary.

So next time you face the tedious task of picking out seeds, take heart, a seedless variety may soon be available.