seedless watermelons

[Thomas Bjorkman]

In article <33akj5$4cu at ra.nrl.navy.mil>, echang at cbmse.nrl.navy.mil (Eddie
Chang) wrote:

> 
> We recently bought a "seedless" watermelon from a roadside stall. My
> daughter noticed that even though there were no seeds to speak of,
> there were plenty of "seed holes", just as if there were seeds that
> vanished.  Does anyone have an explanation?  BTW, it was great.

Seedless watermelons are triploid.  The embryo sac forms normally bec asue
it is maternal tissue, and it makes the "seed hole".  There is no embryo to
fill it because the triploids are sterile.
-- 
Thomas Bjorkman    Dept. of Horticultural Sciences   Cornell University