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Twin_Spoons t1_j6jzpi8 wrote

It's very difficult to cultivate a seedless fruit. Even if by magic you could acquire a bushel of seedless apples... how to you make more? Plant the seeds?

The (relatively small, actually) number of seedless fruits thus require some genetic and/or agricultural trickery to create. Seedless oranges come from grafting branches from one solitary mutant orange tree onto donor trees that would otherwise grow seeded oranges. Seedless watermelon are grown by cross-breeding two strains that are sterile when combined.

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engin__r t1_j6k11wm wrote

Aren't apples grafted anyway? I've read that if you plant an apple seed, the fruit from the resulting tree will be nothing like the original apple.

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GalFisk t1_j6k1hoe wrote

Yup, I think it's something like 1 in 40000 seeds that will actually yield a palatable variety. Avocado is similar.

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czbz t1_j6kiavv wrote

Where did you find that 1 in 40000 figure? From what I can see online you can grow and eat apples from seed, it's just a gamble because you don't know what the apples will taste like. Nothing I read said it was extremely unlikely that they will be palatable.

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GalFisk t1_j6m1fw3 wrote

That was from memory, but when I google it I find 1 out of 80000 instead.

Curiously I don't find a good source, only almost the exact same sentence repeated over and over, with slight variations, and the same weird grammatical issue/quirk.

This is the sentence: "Apples do not come true from seed. Actually about 1 in every 80,000 apple trees grown from seed is quality factors good enough to even be considered for evaluation."

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czbz t1_j6mm1id wrote

OK - I think "considered for evaluation" is a much higher standard than palatable. I guess it's only worth considering for commercial evaluation if it seems likely to have some competitive advantage over all the other apple varieties currently available.

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cockmanderkeen t1_j6k4ze4 wrote

I thought this was the case for all fruit that grows on trees.

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Drink_Covfefe t1_j6k9aav wrote

Apple varieties are nearly 100% clones, we dont ever grow orchards from seed. They clone the apples trees from cuttings and grafts.

We can also do this super easily with oranges. Say you have a really nice seedless orange, you just need to cut off a growth bud and allow it to set root.

Apple breeding sometimes requires seeds. There are ways that you can breed plants without seeds using tissue culture techniques that revert adult cells into embryonic plant cells.

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