Seedless fruit facts for kids

Imagine biting into a juicy fruit without having to spit out any seeds! That's exactly what a seedless fruit is. These special fruits are grown to have no fully developed seeds inside. People love them because they are super easy and convenient to eat. This makes seedless fruits very popular and valuable in stores.

Most seedless fruits you see in stores come from plants that usually have lots of big, hard seeds. Scientists and farmers have found ways to make these plants produce fruits without seeds.

Popular Seedless Fruits

You probably already know many seedless fruits! Some common ones are:

• Watermelons
• Grapes (like the 'Termarina rossa' type)
• Some tomatoes
• Many citrus fruits, such as oranges, lemons, and limes

Recently, seedless sweet peppers have also become available. These peppers are crunchy and sweet, and you don't have to worry about the seeds!

How Do Seedless Fruits Grow?

It might seem strange for a fruit to not have seeds, since fruits usually contain seeds. But seedless fruits can develop in a couple of cool ways:

Growing Without Fertilization

Sometimes, a fruit can grow even without the plant's flower being fertilized. This process is called parthenocarpy. It's like the fruit decides to grow all by itself! For example, some tomatoes, pineapples, and cucumbers can do this if they aren't pollinated. If they are pollinated, they will grow seeds.

Seeds That Don't Grow Up

Another way is when the flower is pollinated, which starts the fruit growing. But then, the tiny seeds inside stop developing and never become mature. This is called stenospermocarpy.

Special Plants: Triploids

Many seedless fruits, like seedless bananas and watermelons, come from special plants called triploids. Most plants have two sets of chromosomes, but triploid plants have three sets. This extra set makes it very hard for the plant to make proper seeds. It's like trying to fit three socks into a pair – it just doesn't work out right!

These triploid plants can happen naturally through a small change in the plant's DNA, or by crossing a plant with two sets of chromosomes (a diploid) with a plant that has four sets (a tetraploid).

How Are Seedless Fruits Planted?

Since seedless fruits don't have seeds, how do farmers grow more of them?

Cloning Plants

Often, farmers use methods that create exact copies, or clones, of the original plant. This can be done by:

• Taking cuttings (a piece of the plant) and planting them.
• Grafting, where a part of one plant is joined to another.
• For bananas, they grow new plants from "pups," which are small shoots that grow from the base of the parent plant.

All these methods result in plants that are genetically identical to the parent plant.

Seedless Watermelons from Seeds!

Even though they are called "seedless," seedless watermelons are actually grown from seeds! These special seeds are made by crossing a normal watermelon plant (diploid) with a watermelon plant that has four sets of chromosomes (tetraploid). The seeds from this cross will grow into sterile triploid plants that produce seedless watermelons.

For these triploid plants to produce fruit, they still need pollen. So, farmers plant them next to regular watermelon plants that provide the pollen. The pollen helps trigger the fruit to grow, but the seeds inside won't fully develop.

Challenges with Seedless Fruits

While seedless fruits are great, there can be some challenges.

Less Variety

Because many seedless fruits are grown from clones, there isn't much genetic diversity among them. This means that if a certain pest or disease affects one plant, it can easily affect all the other cloned plants too.

For example, most bananas you eat are clones of a type called the Cavendish. These bananas are now facing a serious fungal disease around the world because they are all so similar and can't fight it off easily.