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Seedless Watermelons
Where does a seedless watermelon come from? The short answer is: from a "mule" plant that was manipulated to produce fruit without seeds. The story begins, oddly enough, with the autumn crocus, Colchicum autumnale, which produces a chemical called colchicine.
When the first leaves of emerging watermelons (the embryonic leaves known as cotyledons) are treated with colchicine, a small number of the plants end up with four sets of chromosomes, double the number they would naturally have. Watermelon and other squashes have two kinds of flowers: male and female. The flowers are pollinated by bees, and offspring get half of their chromosomes from each parent plant. When the female flower of a tetraploid (plant with four sets of chromosomes) receives pollen from the male flower of a normal diploid (plant with two sets of chromosomes), each offspring ends up with three sets of chromosomes.
These triploids grow into plants and produce flowers and fruit. However, the cell divisions that produce egg cells require a precise alignment of chromosome pairs, an impossible feat with the odd number of copies in a triploid. The result@a seedless melon. Years of meticulous cross-breeding precedes each new seedless watermelon on the market, which explains the high cost of the seeds. When you purchase a pack, the seed company should also send a few normal seeds, so you'll have some pollen-filled melon flowers in your garden. Even seedless watermelons need to be pollinated before they'll bear fruit.
