Where do the seeds of seedless watermelon come from? How are seedless watermelons grown?

After the seedless watermelon seeds are induced to grow through mutation cultivation, colchicine is used to artificially induce tetraploid watermelons, which are then hybridized with ordinary watermelons. Seedless watermelons must be mixed with ordinary watermelons to ensure the final quality.

Where do seedless watermelon seeds come from?

1. Mutation breeding

Seedless watermelons will not have mature black granular seeds in their final fruits, but only very rare and severely underdeveloped white immature seeds. Therefore, the fruit seed planting method commonly used for growing watermelons cannot be used, and the mutagenesis breeding method must be used to obtain seeds through hybridization.

2. Cultivation methods

Ordinary diploid seeded watermelons are used as the mother plant . After cultivation, colchicine is used to induce mutation and transform it into a special tetraploid watermelon variety.

Then select high-quality diploid seeded watermelon as the male parent and tetraploid watermelon as the female parent , and the hybrid obtained is triploid seedless watermelon .

3. Mixed varieties

When planting seedless watermelons, you cannot plant only seedless watermelons in one piece of land. You also need to plant some seeded watermelons scattered around.

This is because the chromosome pairing of the triploid seedless watermelon itself is abnormal and it cannot reproduce normally. It needs to use the pollen of the diploid ordinary watermelon to pollinate and reproduce offspring .

How are seedless watermelons grown?

1. Colchicine treatment of diploid watermelon seeds or seedlings

Treating diploid watermelon seeds or seedlings with colchicine can hinder the formation of spindle fibers and primary walls during the metaphase of cell division, prevent the replicated chromosome sets from dividing to the two poles, and form a secondary wall in the middle.

After such cultivation, the result is the formation of cells with doubled chromosome sets, which doubles the chromosome set of ordinary diploid watermelon and obtains tetraploid watermelon plants.

2. Hybridization with diploid watermelon plants

Then they are hybridized with diploid watermelon plants to obtain triploid seeds. The triploid seeds develop into triploid plants, but due to the disorder of synapsis of homologous chromosomes during the methoedization process, normal reproductive cells cannot be formed.

The mature diploid pollen of ordinary watermelon is then used to stimulate the ovary of the flower of the triploid plant to produce triploid fruit. Because its ovules cannot develop into seeds, it is called triploid seedless watermelon.