Gene editing opens doors to seedless fruit

Several types of seedless fruits, from bananas to cucumbers to grapes, are already widely available, but many have come about by luck rather than design. Seedless bananas are the result of accidental crosses between subspecies, for instance, while other seedless fruits stem from spontaneous mutations. There are a few seedless varieties of tomato, but they have taken breeders many years to create.

Now Keishi Osakabe at Tokushima University in Japan and his colleagues have used the CRISPR gene-editing technique to deliberately introduce a mutation that makes tomatoes seedless. The mutation increases levels of a hormone called auxin, which stimulates fruits to develop even though no seeds have begun to form.

“We haven’t tasted them yet, but in theory they should taste the same,” says Osakabe.

Some “seedless” fruits just have very small seeds, and still require pollination. But completely seedless – or parthenocarpic – fruit like this tomato do not require pollination at all. They could therefore improve food security by reducing our reliance on declining numbers of bees, says Saul Cunningham at the Australian National University.

Read more at New Scientist