How are seedless fruits made?

Seedless fruits are grown by stimulating the pistil head of the flower along with the help of plant hormones (phytohormone) that trigger the ovary to develop.

Seedless fruits, which have been around for a long time, exist in the wild and can also be created by humans. The process of forming seedless fruits is called parthenocarpy and is now widely used.

What is parthenocarpy?

The term parthenocarpy was introduced in 1902 to describe fruits that are created without pollination or other stimulation. Take bananas as an example, it's a seedless fruit. Bananas grown under the parthenocarpy method will be sterile , their pistil will not produce any seeds and thus the fruit will be seedless.

Picture 1 of How are seedless fruits made?
Bananas are classified as seedless fruits.

In fact, the fruit is the ripe pistil of the flower. A flower contains a ovary with one or more ovules inside. These oocytes contain egg cells. Fertilization in plants is different from human fertilization. In plants, there are two sperm cells, as opposed to a single human sperm cell that enters the ovary. In plants, one sperm will penetrate into the egg and form a zygote, while the other will penetrate the central cell to form endosperm, which is the tissue that the embryo uses. Over time, the ovule develops into a seed and the ovary begins to ripen, becoming large and full of meat to eventually form a fruit. It is the most natural and popular way in nature.

As for parthenocarpy, the fruit will be grown without fertilization of eggs and sperm. Parthenocarpy can be natural or artificial to develop seedless fruits on a commercial scale.

How are seedless fruits and vegetables grown?

Hormones play an important part in plant growth and development. Seed and fruit development are closely related processes that are controlled by hormone levels. Seedless fruit production can start with tree development, producing fruit independent of fertilization and fertilization. At this time, the fruit's development is under the control of phytohormone , a plant present in small amounts in the plant that helps regulate germination, metabolism and growth.

Auxins and gibberellins are important plant hormones that play a major role in plant growth. They are natural phytohormones, but can also be added from outside. These two hormones are widely used to develop seedless fruits on a commercial scale.

Tomatoes, also known as Solanum lycopersicum L., are among the most widely studied fruits for the production of seedless fruits. Botanically, tomatoes are a fruit rather than a vegetable group because it is formed from a flower.

Tomatoes are widely used to study how to create artificial seedless fruits. In 1936, Gustafson was the first to apply an auxin-like substance to the tomato pistil, causing its ovary to grow seedless. The pistil is the female reproductive part of the flower, which receives pollen from bees and many other sources. Gustafson also found that applying pollen outside the ovary produced similar results, leading to the hypothesis that pollen contains hormones similar to auxin.

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Tomatoes are exactly a fruit, not a vegetable group. 

Put simply, the common hormones found in pollen move to the ovary, thereby developing into a seedy fruit. However, if you only apply the hormone to the outside of the flower's pistil, the ovary will still be stimulated by the hormone source. The ovary does not distinguish between stimulation with natural pollen and stimulation by external hormones. The fruit is formed without natural pollination and is therefore a normal but seedless fruit.

In one experiment, seedless fruits were created genetically by using auxin iaaM synthetic genome of Pseudomonas syringae pv. Savastanoi. This genee is under the control of the specialized ovarian genome region or the oocyte stem cell of the wolf-shaped DefH9 gene (Antirrhinum majus). The promoter region is where the DNA begins the genee transcription process. It basically promotes the initiation of gene expression. Based on studies of tissues collected from plants, it was found that there was significant synthesis of auxin during fruit development. This genee has assisted effectively in producing seedless morphology of tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants and raspberries.

Picture 3 of How are seedless fruits made?
Seedless fruits are produced by adjusting the GA gene to synthesize GA signals.

Gibberellin (GA) is another plant hormone that is thought to affect plant growth and fruit development. It was found that tomatoes stimulated to reproduce by gibberellin would be smaller than tomatoes with seeds, so gibberellin alone was not enough for the comprehensive development of the fruit. Auxin and gibberellin are believed to have a mutual effect on the growth of fruits and vegetables, such as with tomatoes and peas. It was found that supplementing with gibberellin can increase auxin levels in the ovary of non-pollinated flowers.

Seedless fruits are produced by adjusting the GA gene to synthesize GA signals. A set of proteins called SIDELLA is the negative regulator of the GA pathway. The depletion of these proteins allows plants to overcome the growth constraint commonly applied to the ovary during flowering.

Flowering is the period when the flower is ready to fertilize. During the flowering period, the ovary of the flower is immature and ovule, so they are constrained their ability to develop. Pollination leads to the development of ovary and embryo sacs. If an external hormone source is added during this period, the flower will be pollinated by stimulation, the ovary begins to mature and produces seedless fruits. Depletion of SIDELLA protein allows GA synthesis to take place, even without pollination, causing the ovary to develop into a seedless fruit.

Picture 4 of How are seedless fruits made?
Seedless watermelons are produced through this process with the help of triploid plants.

Gene tuning is not the only way to create seedless fruits. A change in the number of chromosome sets of plants can also achieve the same purpose. This method is based on the number of homologous chromosomes in the genome of a cell or an organism. Seedless watermelons are produced through this process with the help of triploid plants. An extra chromosome cannot pair evenly, which limits the cell division phase and splits the chromosome appropriately into daughter cells. The result was mutant and seedless watermelon.

Conclude

There are many reasons why seedless fruits are so important. This is because they can increase the quality and taste of the product, especially when the fruit's seeds are hard or taste bad; at the same time change the texture or prevent spots on the shell. The shelf life is also longer due to the absence of seeds, which increases their commerciality.

Seedless fruits can be of great value on the market, but are not easy to produce due to various impact factors. When producing the product, care must be taken not to cause changes in the vegetative or reproductive nature of the plant. Another point of concern is the amount of hormone added. Normally, the hormone is maintained in very small concentrations, so any increase can lead to morphological abnormalities of the fruit.

Humans continue to explore and study how plant hormones affect fruit development. With in-depth knowledge, we will be able to create more commercially seedless fruits.

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