‘Scuse me, but … how do they grow more seedless fruit?–Just askin’, Salt Lake City, Utah
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Luckily, sex is only one method of propagating a species. There’s also asexual reproduction, such as that engaged in by our parents. By means of cuttings, grafting, or what have you, it’s possible to make multiple copies of the parent plant. What’s more, the offspring plants have the advantage, from a horticultural standpoint, of being perfect genetic duplicates or clones of the parent plant. So once you’ve bred the ultimate begonia, you can crank out exact copies unto the hundredth generation. And people do just that. Some grape “cultivars,” as human-bred (and often human-dependent) varieties are called, date from Roman times–that is, the plants we have today are exact genetic copies of ones first grown 2,000 years ago.
So, you think you understand? Time to obfuscate the situation. It is possible to buy seeds that, when planted, produce seedless watermelons. Whence cometh this seed? It’s the product of an unnatural union between different varieties of watermelon, resulting in a hybrid that, like many hybrids, is sterile. You plant the hybrid seeds, and you get a plant whose fruit matures but whose seeds are underdeveloped. To make more seed you have to keep mating the mommy and daddy plants. There is vastly more to it than that, but that’s about all I can explain without charging you quarterly tuition. Pass me a grape.
