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Smallgardener
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Seedless varieties
How do they get seeds from a seedless plant. Makes me wonder. Seedless watermelon seeds are hard to find.
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rainbowgardener
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Here's an article about it:
https://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/seedless_w ... ey_do_that
Basically the answer is they don't. Seedless watermelons don't produce seeds and don't reproduce themselves. They have to be created new as hybrids each generation.
They are like mules. Mules are a cross between a donkey and a horse, which are different species and don't naturally inter-breed. Mules are [almost always] sterile. So even though you have a bunch of mules, you can't just breed them to keep having more generations of mules. You have to keep going back to the original horse and donkey.
https://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/seedless_w ... ey_do_that
Basically the answer is they don't. Seedless watermelons don't produce seeds and don't reproduce themselves. They have to be created new as hybrids each generation.
They are like mules. Mules are a cross between a donkey and a horse, which are different species and don't naturally inter-breed. Mules are [almost always] sterile. So even though you have a bunch of mules, you can't just breed them to keep having more generations of mules. You have to keep going back to the original horse and donkey.
Most seedless plants like seedless watermelons and burpless cucumbers are not only hybrids they are often parthenocarpic. They produce all female flowers and do not need to be pollinated to make fruit. If it is not pollinated then there are no viable seeds. If by chance a bee does pollinate the flowers, the seed will enlarge but in the case of cucumbers, the fruit will be deformed and be thicker on the blossom end and thinner on the stem end.
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elizabethdennis
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rainbowgardener
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A little more complicated than that, if you read the article. Once they have the (sterile) seedless watermelon plant, then they need to have a regular seeded watermelon growing nearby to pollenate it. But that still begs the question of where did the seedless plant come from.
That goes back to the horse/donkey example.
They use some kind of "chemical process" to prevent the chromosomes from dividing in meiosis. Thus instead of gametes (pollen and egg cells) with half the usual number of chromosome that will fuse together to create a (diploid) embryo with the usual number, they have gametes with the usual number, that will fuse together to create an embryo with twice the usual number (tetraploid). The tetraploid seed is grown out to a plant. A female tetraploid flower is then "artificially inseminated" with pollen from a regular diploid male flower. The resulting seed will have half the usual chromosomes from one parent and the usual number from the other and so will be triploid, 1.5 times the usual number of chromosomes. The triploid seeds grow into the seedless watermelon whose flowers then have to be pollenated with pollen from a regular watermelon to produce fruit.
But this process has to be repeated in each generation to get those triploid seeds. It's why they are rare.
That goes back to the horse/donkey example.
They use some kind of "chemical process" to prevent the chromosomes from dividing in meiosis. Thus instead of gametes (pollen and egg cells) with half the usual number of chromosome that will fuse together to create a (diploid) embryo with the usual number, they have gametes with the usual number, that will fuse together to create an embryo with twice the usual number (tetraploid). The tetraploid seed is grown out to a plant. A female tetraploid flower is then "artificially inseminated" with pollen from a regular diploid male flower. The resulting seed will have half the usual chromosomes from one parent and the usual number from the other and so will be triploid, 1.5 times the usual number of chromosomes. The triploid seeds grow into the seedless watermelon whose flowers then have to be pollenated with pollen from a regular watermelon to produce fruit.
But this process has to be repeated in each generation to get those triploid seeds. It's why they are rare.