How to produce "seedless" watermelon seedlings if they are seedless?

Answer 1

The term seedless fruit refers to fruit that are without seeds. Seedless fruits are considered commercially valuable because seeds are considered a nuisance by consumers. Seedless fruits are easier to eat and thus preferred over otherwise similar seeded fruits. Most commercially-produced seedless fruits have been developed from plants whose fruits normally contain numerous relatively large hard seeds that are distributed throughout the flesh of the fruit; there would be little commercial benefit to a seedless peach or apple.

Biologically the term is somewhat an oxymoron, since fruits are usually defined in a botanical sense as mature ovaries containing seeds.

Seedless fruits can develop in one of two ways: either the fruit develops without any fertilization (parthenocarpy), or pollination triggers fruit development but the ovules or embryos abort without producing mature seeds (stenospermocarpy). Seedless fruits of banana and watermelon are produced on triploid plants, whose three sets of chromosomes prevent meiosis from taking place and thus do not 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 produce seedless fruit if not pollinated but seeded fruit if pollination occurs, e.g. pineapple and cucumber.

A common question is how, if they do not produce seeds, such plants can be propagated. In most cases the plants are 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. Oddly enough, 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 and these plants must be grown alongside a diploid strain to provide pollen.

One disadvantage of most seedless crops is that, as genetically identical clones, a pest or disease that can harm one individual can harm every individual of that clone. For example, the vast majority of commercially produced bananas come from a single clone, the 'Cavendish' cultivar, which is currently threatened worldwide by a newly discovered fungal disease to which it is highly susceptible.

Answer 2

For pollination purposes, you need to plant a standard variety of watermellon along with the seedless variety. You can buy the seed of seedless varieties from most major seed companies, & then you plant them. About one-third of the plants in the garden should be of the standard or 'pollinator' variety.

Where do the seeds come from? "Simply stated, the number of chromosomes (the threadlike bodies within cells that contain the inheritance units called genes) in a normal watermelon plant is doubled by the use of the chemical colchicine. Doubling a normal (diploid) watermelon results in a tetraploid plant (one having four sets of chromosomes). When the tetraploid plant is bred back, or pollinated, by a diploid or normal plant, the resulting seed produces a triploid plant that is basically a "mule" of the plant kingdom, and it produces seedless watermelons."
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/newsletters/hortupdate/may00/h5may00.html
Good question!!! Hope this helps.

Answer 3

I think you would have to root "cuttings" from the plant, since there are no seeds or seedlings.

Answer 4

you can't. they're a GM fruit. (genetically modified).