Watermelon, being a common summer treat, is widely eaten throughout the country and overall world. There are multiple different types of watermelon including seedless watermelon and regular, seeded watermelon. More often than not, people will decide to eat the seedless watermelon, because who wants to be cautious about those pesky little seeds?

However, I doubt that most people have put some serious thought into the seedless watermelon they’re quickly devouring. If seedless watermelon are considered a fruit, why don’t they have seeds? Do the seeds naturally not occur in the watermelon, or are they specially plucked from the food? These are the questions you should ask yourself before you divulge in a possible mutant fruit.

Overall, a food is defined as a fruit if it has a fleshy inner body and either a large pit or regular sized seeds. Examples these types of fruits are peaches, or even avocados. So if a watermelon is a fruit, how come a seedless watermelon doesn’t have seeds, yet is still classified as a fruit?

The answer is yes, a seedless watermelon is a fruit. However, it is in fact a hybrid fruit. Seedless watermelon are the product of cross-breeding a male watermelon pollen with 22 chromosomes per cell, with a female watermelon flower with 44 chromosomes per cell. This mixture of cells creates a sterile fruit that is incapable of further producing seeds. Therefore, you can not grow a watermelon from a hybrid, seedless watermelon.

The process of creating these fruit hybrids are fairly simple. Each fruit is produced from a plant/flower. Each of these flowers produce a pollen that can be transmitted to another flower. In order to do so, the male flower is cut at the stem, and then the pollen producing section of the male flower is rubbed against the female flower. This exchange of pollen wont immediately create the hybrid. Instead, it will create a seed that holds the new hybrid fruit. Plant that seed, and grow the brand new fruit!

This fact also negates my other question of how the seeds are taken out? The seeds don’t need to be removed from the watermelon due to the lack of seeds that the watermelon produces. Therefore, the seedless watermelon is not a chemically produced mutant fruit. But rather a genetically created hybrid.

http://www.ehow.com/facts_7439008_fruit-fruit-vegetable-vegetable_.html

http://www.whataboutwatermelon.com/index.php/2010/09/the-truth-about-seedless-watermelon/

http://www.wikihow.com/Cross-Pollinate-Different-Vegetables-to-Create-Hybrids