Seedless Fruit Production

If I swallow a watermelon seed, a new watermelon will grow in my stomach, right? Just kidding! It is a good thing that we have seedless watermelons. What....if there are no seeds. how do we make more of them? These days, you see way more seedless fruits than seeded. Seedless grapes, oranges, watermelons, come to mind. But, natural bananas have seeds in them, so do cucumbers.

The fruit is, by nature, a matured ovary around a seed; the flesh of a watermelon or apple is a part of that ovary. So, if it's not natural, then what is a seedless fruit? Seedless plants have been around for milllennia. Some strains of grapes were documented in ancient Roman times that didn't produce seeds. And in 1872, seedless navel oranges were brought to the US from Brazil. They were sourced from a clump of freak orange trees, accordin to an article of the New York Times, from 1902. And, thanks to the American farmers, they grow everywhere today.

So, it seems that the seed gene of watermelon has a relationship with the time of maturity and sweetness, while for the orange plant, it is juiciness.