How do seedless watermelons grow?
Normal watermelons are diploid, meaning they have 2 copies of each chromosome. Seedless watermelons have been genetically altered by humans to make them triploid: meaning they carry three copies of each chromosome, not two like a normal watermelon. Triploid plants have difficulty making seeds – You do find some seeds, just very few. To grow them you first make a tetraploid watermelon, which has four copies of each chromosome. This is done by treating dividing cells with colchicine, a chemical that disrupts cell division (I’ll skip the details of this procedure). Tetraploid plants can produce seeds. You then cross a tetraploid with a normal diploid, which gives triploid offspring, who produce seedless watermelons. Grass does have seeds FYI. Normally your lawn is cut before it makes seeds.
