Seedless Fruit

In botany and horticulture, parthenocarpy (literally meaning virgin fruit) is the natural or artificially induced production of fruit without fertilization of ovules.
The fruit is therefore seedless. Parthenocarpy occasionally occurs as a mutation in nature, but it is usually considered a defect, as the plant can no longer sexually reproduce, but may propagate by asexual means. However, parthenocarpy of some fruits on a plant may be of value. Seedlessness is a very desirable trait in edible fruit with hard seeds such as pineapple, banana, orange and grapefruit. Parthenocarpy is also desirable in fruit crops that may be difficult to pollinate or fertilize, such as tomato and summer squash. In dioecious species, such as persimmon, parthenocarpy increases fruit production because staminate trees do not need to be planted to provide pollen. Parthencarpy is undesirable in nut crops, such as pistachio, where the seed is the edible part.

A seedless fruit is a fruit developed to possess no mature seeds. As consumption of seedless fruits is generally easier and more convenient, they are considered commercially valuable. Most commercially produced seedless fruits have been developed from plants whose fruits normally contain numerous relatively large hard seeds distributed throughout the flesh of the fruit. Seedless fruits can develop in one of two ways: either the fruit develops without any fertilization ( parthe nocarpy), or pollination triggers fruit development, but the ovules or embryos abort without producing mature seeds (stenospermocarpy). Seedless banana and watermelon fruits are produced on triploid plants, whose three sets of chromosomes prevent meiosis from taking place and thus the plants cannot produce fertile gametes. Such plants can arise by spontaneous mutation or by hybridization between diploid and tetraploid individuals of the same or different species. Some species, such as pineapple and cucumber, produce seedless fruit if not pollinated, but do produce seeded fruit if pollination occurs. Lacking seeds, and therefore the capacity to propagate via the fruit, the plants are generally propagated vegetatively from cuttings, by grafting, or in the case of bananas, from "pups" (offsets). In such cases, the resulting plants are genetically identical clones. By contrast, seedless watermelons are grown from seeds. These seeds are produced by crossing diploid and tetraploid lines of watermelon, with the resulting seeds producing sterile triploid plants. Fruit development is triggered by pollination, so these plants must be grown alongside a diploid strain to provide pollen. One disadvantage of most seedless crops is a significant reduction in the amount of genetic diversity in the species. As genetically identical clones, a pest or disease that affects one individual is likely to be

capable of affecting every clone of that individual. For example, the vast majority of commercially produced bananas are cloned from a single source, the Cavendish cultivar, and those plants are currently threatened worldwide by a newly discovered fungal disease to which they are highly susceptible. Triploid plants with seedless fruits can also be produced using endosperm culture for the regeneration of triploid plantlets from endosperm tissue via somatic embryogenesis.

Varieties
Common varieties of seedless fruits include watermelons, grapes and bananas. Additionally, there are numerous seedless citrus fruits, such as oranges, lemons and limes.

Genetically modified watermelons

Japan has found a way to make square watermelons Due to its shape, the melons are actually easier to stack, store, and ship meaning it can be more efficient to deliver and use less fossil fuels. Now if it were only more affordable: it currently sells for about $82 and only in Japan.