where do seedless watermelons come from?

[Skink]

Food is good!

Food is life...

[slipknotpsycho]

goddamnit now ima have to go get watermelon... damn you people...

[stinkyattic]

Oooh it's another colchichine technique- that shit is NASTY- there has been a lot of work done with treating cannabis seeds with it, or with the bulbs of autumn crocus, its source, to force polyploidy in cannabis plants... germination rates drop through the FLOOR and you get weird mutations, but anecdotally, polyploid plants have outstanding resin production.
Thanks johneg!

[scream]

clones only baby...oh wait, the science mumbo jumbo up there might be right

[Skink]

Genetics Of The Triploid Seedless Watermelon

Modern varieties of the watermelon are derived from the native African vine Citrullus lanatus (syn. C. vulgaris). Cultivated for thousands of years in the Nile Valley, this species still grows wild in the arid interior where it supplies native people with water during drought seasons. According to R.W. Robinson and D.S. Decker-Walters (1997), wild populations of C. lanatus var. citroides, which are common in central Africa, probably gave rise to domesticated watermelons (var. lanatus). Wild, ancestral watermelons (var. citroides) have a spherical, striped fruit, and white, slightly bitter or bland flesh. The pale flesh tastes like the rind of a typical watermelon. They are commonly known as the citron or citron melon, not to be confused with the "citron" Citrus medica of the Citrus Family (Rutaceae). The citron is also called "preserving melon" because the fruit rind is used in preserves, jellies and to make pickles or conserves. Because of its high pectin content, it is added to fruit juices to make them jell more rapidly. One plant may produce up to 100 fruits, which are commonly fed to livestock. Citron melons become weedy vines in cultivated melon fields of North America, and are unmistakable among other cucurbits because of their pinnatifid (pinnately dissected) leaves. The citron is naturalized in the Cape Region of Baja California, along with the curious teasel gourd.


See Citron Growing Wild Along RR Tracks In San Diego County



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Modern triploid watermelons (with three haploid sets of chromosomes) are unable to produce viable gametes during meiosis, and much to the delight of growers, their ripened melons are seedless. [Note: The word "set" is defined here as one haploid set of chromosomes.] They are produced by crossing a tetraploid (4n) seed parent bearing 2n eggs with a diploid (2n) pollen parent bearing haploid (n) sperm. Tetraploid plants are produced by treating the terminal buds of diploid plants with colchicine, causing the chromosome number of the meristematic cells inside to double. The haploid (n) sperm from a pollen grain from the male flower of the 2n parent fertilizes the diploid (2n) egg inside the ovule of a female flower on the 4n parent. The resulting 3n zygote develops into a 3n embryo inside a seed. Planting this seed will yield a 3n watermelon plant bearing 3n seedless watermelons. The following illustration shows this cross resulting in a triploid watermelon plant:




The triploid seed will germinate and grow into a triploid plant bearing triploid male and female flowers, but the flowers will not produce viable sperm-bearing pollen or eggs because of the odd number of chromosome sets (3). With three sets of chromosomes, one set will not have a matching (homologous) set to pair up with during synapsis of prophase 1 of meiosis. This synaptic failure results in gametes that are not viable, therefore double fertilization inside the ovule does not occur and an embryo-bearing seed is not typically formed. When you buy seedless watermelon seeds, you get two kinds of seeds, one for the fertile diploid plant and one for the sterile triploid. The triploid seeds are larger, and both types of seeds are planted in the same vicinity. Male flowers of the diploid plant provide the pollen which pollinates (but does not fertilize) the sterile triploid plant. The act of pollination induces fruit development without fertilization, thus the triploid watermelons are seedless.

[Nightcrewman]

ASDA


Cheers

NCM

[stinkyattic]

watermelon isn't a plant that you can make seedless through cloning... it's monoecious, meaning each flower has both male and female parts. the only reason cannabis can be sensemilla is that the pollen is made on a seperate PLANT than the ovaries, so you can simply eliminate males.

[RaoulDuke45]

bananas also used to have seeds, but sceinctists can do crazy things, but it has been said that soon we wont have any bananas, they will become exctict

[Darth Vapor]

I suspect seedless watermelons come from the place Viagra did. :rasta:

[palerider7777]

i have yet to see a seedless watermelon either every (seedless)one iv'e split open still has the lil white seeds in it so still not seedless to me and the lil white seeds are harder to get out as well and the taste is nowhere as good as a seeded one