Eli5 How do people grow seedless watermelons? Like where do they get the seeds?
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>How do people grow seedless watermelons?
They plant seeds for seedless watermelons and they grow. 😋
>Like where do they get the seeds?
Farmers buy those seeds from seed manufacturers (like Monsanto or DuPont).
If you are asking how are seedless watermelon seeds created, then that has to do with the cross-breeding of two specific strains of watermelon — *one diploid (normal complement of DNA) with one tetraploid (double the normal amount of DNA)* — which results in a sterile strain. So seedless watermelons are sterile, meaning that they can produce no offspring, so the seeds present (they are not truly seedless) are very slight and are hardly noticed when eaten.
Many seedless plants like Bananas are grown from cuttings, making all commercial banana plants genetic clones of each other.
But seedless watermelons are in fact grown from seeds. Diploid and Tetraploid watermelon varieties are cross pollinated to produce a sterile (seedless) watermelon plant.
They still come from seeds. It is sterile tho, it can grow but won’t reproduce. It is like using the seeds for one time only.
1. Poke a hole in the ground
2. Cover it with dirt
3. Water and wait a few weeks
4. Boom, seedless watermelons
They aren’t really seedless, the seeds just take a little longer to grow. You buy a ripe watermelon and you will see either white younger seeds or the older black ones.
Also isn’t there a species of watermelon where there is a male and female fruit on one vine where one has the seeds but is not really edible and the others are seedless and edible?
What nobody ITT has mentioned so far is that when you purchase seedless watermelons from a [seed catalog ](https://www.johnnyseeds.com/growers-library/vegetables/watermelon-triploid-seedless-production.html) they actually send you two packs of seeds. One pack has the diploid type one pack has the triploid type and you plant them together in the field or greenhouse so that the diploid pollinates the triploid producing seedless fruit on the triploid plants.
Edit: The diploid type is usually a variety selected because it produces a lot of flowers over a long period of time to provide pollen for the triploid plants. Without pollination the triploid plants don’t get the signal to start forming fruits. Interestingly the diploid plants will produce fruit as well (with seeds) but is easily distinguishable from the seedless fruits.
I’m sorry to not answer your question, but it’s in line with it. Did you know that every apple of the same variety comes from a single parent tree? Every apple seed contained in an apple will grow a tree with different properties, so the branches of the original tree need to be grafted in order to grow the same variety. That means that every Granny Smith apple ever has technically come from a single tree. This presents a problem as the trees cannot evolve and adapt to protect from pests. Also, the most popular banana in the world, the one you see at almost every supermarket in the western world, the Cavendish, is a dying cultivar. This isn’t the first time in history this has happened as the most common banana of the past was the Gros Michel. Our incessant need to have consistency threatens the very things we love.
So imagine you have a European outlet and an American outlet. Both outlets work wonderfully with their respective pieces. This is how watermelon reproduction is for simplicities sake. You have American watermelon and European ones. Now if you mix them up it still makes a watermelon. But this new watermelon has a European outlet and an American plug. This means you can eat the watermelon but it can’t conduct electricity. Thus there are no seeds. The two types of watermelons are called diploid and tetroid. When breeded together they make a water melon, but it can’t make seeds cause the outlet doesn’t connect.
A mule is a crossbreed from a donkey and horse. It’s sterile.
You can crossbreed plants too. Take pistil from one and put it in the flower of the 2nd (or just have them close and trust bees). 2 specific species of watermelon make seedless watermelon when mixed. It’s sterile.
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