The Great Seed Debate: Seeded vs Seedless

Picking up where we left off on our discussion about GMO'S and Hybrids. I promised you we'd dive into the topic of seeded vs seedless produce. So here we go.

To start, I'll ask this question. When was the last time you ate an apple, orange or grape in its entirety, seeds and all? Admittedly, I actually enjoy roasted watermelon seeds and who doesn't love a good Egusi soup? But I have never, ever, not even once heard of someone chowing down on a bag of lemon seeds, or grapefruit seeds. So, it bewilders me when people all of a sudden become irate at the prospect of seedless fruit becoming more mainstream.

Of course, I've heard the claims of seedless fruit being less nutritional and ok, yeah seedless fruit are technically less nutritional if you take into account the nutrients and phytonutrients contained within the seed itself. But once again, you likely weren't eating them anyway, making the nutritional value argument quite moot.

Now one could certainly argue on the behalf of seed-savers like myself. I'm a huge advocate for saving your seeds and learning all the many ways to preserve and grow food for generations to come. And while there are plenty of fruit that actually grow true to type, such as stone fruit and many citrus varieties. The prevalence of hybrids (which, remember, aren't so scary) on the market make it somewhat difficult to know what variety you'll even end up growing from a saved seed from say, a tomato or pepper.

So, I promise you everything is not a conspiracy...and I myself indulge in quite a few. But the math simply isn't mathing on this one. If the proverbial "they" truly wanted to disrupt the Self-sufficiency, food-sovereignty movement, it wouldn't happen on such a miniscule scale. Seeds are not a scarcity, rarity or even a necessity in some cases.

(Unless my husband is reading this, in which case, I never said that. Because I want more seeds.) But it's true, right now, in my personal seed collection, I have hundreds and hundreds of packets of heirloom and hybrid seeds. I even have a few seedless seeds! Which by the way still require pollination from a seeded variety. The company actually sent me a seeded pollinator pack with each seedless pack. So yaay, more seeds and more variety!

However, I don't rely on purchasing or saving market seeds. Not when foraging, trading and cloning are completely viable options. One thing about us gardening people, we love to share. Share our enthusiasm, knowledge, seeds, cuttings, and harvests. We really should be running this place!

Now, let me point out something that I said above. "The company" as in a business, as in a for profit entity who's intent is to make money. I don't think we look at food the same way that we do many other products that we pull off of shelves. Food as a commodity, not a given, not an inevitable, unalienable right is what we are dealing with. This is what we need to combat. Not the horticulturist, or the farmer, but the proverbial "they" who made us compete for food in the first place. Because what in the Hunger Games is that all about?

Ok, so now that I've spoken to your sensibilities, let me fill your heads with some sciency things that you don't necessarily need to remember, that will shed a light on how seedless produce is well, produced.

Remember about a year ago when all those creepy pictures of tomatoes with sprouted seeds were circulating and everyone cried GMO'S? Then the logical bunch chimed in with "That's called vivipary" a perfectly natural occurrence.

Like vivipary, parthenocarpy is a perfectly natural occurrence. I was explaining parthenocarpy and self-incompatible fruit to someone in a gardening group and they got quite defensive. But I will always combat fear and misinformation with facts. Seedless fruit are NOT a new invention. Seedless fruit occur naturally. Humans simply learned to copy natures techniques to reproduce them consistently. Because we're innovative like that.

So, without having to get into terminology like apomixis and nucellar embyony. Parthenocarpy is in essence, fruit that develops without fertilization of the ovules. And this is the most common method for producing consistently seedless fruit.

Even without an understanding of genetics or jargon, we're capable of understanding that nature is not infallible. Once upon a time humans understood that we too are a part of nature, that plants were our first caretakers and teachers.

We've lost many languages and with them many stories. Maybe those things could have taught us sooner what was natural and what was not. Maybe we would have compassion for a seedless fruit instead of disdain, much in the way we have compassion for an infertile couple. Though we may not understand the genetics or the science of why something or someone is the way that they are, we have no right to categorize them as anything outside the realm of what is natural.