[LifeeStyle] Seedless Watermelons: GMOs, Fixed!

[Mr.Jhorjan]

 

link: https://naukas.com/2018/02/08/sandias-sin-semillas-transgenicas-fijo/

seedless watermelon
A transgenic plant is defined as one to which a gene that provides a characteristic of interest has been artificially introduced, through the use of genetic engineering. This gene, called a transgene, must belong to a species of plant with which the plant that has been transformed cannot reproduce naturally, and may even belong to an evolutionarily totally different organism, such as an animal. In the case of seedless watermelons, nothing could be further from the truth, obtaining them is much simpler and “handmade”, and, of course, it has nothing to do with transgenesis.

Seedless watermelon, although we have not been able to buy it in our markets for a long time, was developed in Japan in 1939, simply as a result of a hybridization process between plants with incompatible sets of chromosomes. Specifically, pollen from the male flower of a watermelon plant with two sets of chromosomes (2n) is used and it is artificially crossed with the female flower of a watermelon with four sets of chromosomes (4n).