The Magic of Seedless Fruits

Hi! My name is Troy McClure! You might remember me from science-related blog posts such as: "Fainting Goats are our friends" and "Intelligent Design: Monkeys are too smart to believe in it!".

Have you always wondered how seedless fruits are developed? For example, this delicious green and red watermelon I'm eating right now has only white, soft seeds that can be chewed and swallowed. That sounded really gross. I have found more than one article explaining this mystery of the fruit-farming world.

In a nutshell, the explanation is the following. First, you need two parents with a different number of chromosomes. This is much like a horse and a donkey, or a normal person and a person with Down syndrome (I just learned that mongoloid is considered non-PC). In watermelons this genetic disorder is generated by introducing a chemical called colchicine. Colchicine is a FDA-approved poison that acts very much like arsenic, and has no antidote. In small quantities it inhibits mitosis, and can be used to create a tetraploid seed. These, after been combined with the normal diploid seeds, lead to infertile plants with weak triploid seeds, the seedless-mules of the fruit family!

How do they reproduce if they have subpar seeds? Cutting is the obvious alternative, but it wasn't clear to me how to use that. Recall that many plants are very fragile to cutting, and have trouble developing roots from it. Rooting hormones are used for this purpose, and these plants tend to develop in different, more strict, conditions than their normal-chromosomed ones.

All the DIY genetic monsters fans out there, be warned! This process of cutting and using rooting hormones for asexual reproduction only works for plants, and shouldn't be used with mules as it could lead to mule injury and, possibly, death!

So my friends, I hope you enjoyed our exploration of the mongoloids of the fruit-farming world!