Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question,
Speaker 1: how can there be seedless grapes and how do they reproduce?
Speaker 1: If you go to a grocery store today and buy grapes,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance that the only type of grape
Speaker 1: you can buy is seedless Thompson seedless white grapes, for example,
Speaker 1: don't have any seeds in them. Nearly all grape vines
Speaker 1: in production today produce seedless grapes. It turns out that
Speaker 1: most fruits today do not come from seeds. They come
Speaker 1: from cuttings instead. In the case of seedless grapes, a
Speaker 1: piece of vine is cut off, dipped in rooting hormone,
Speaker 1: and then placed in moist dirt, so the roots and
Speaker 1: leaves form. Because they come from cuttings, new grape vines
Speaker 1: are essentially clones of the vine that they were cut from.
Speaker 1: Seedless grapes actually do contain seeds at some point, but
Speaker 1: a genetic error prevents those seeds from forming a hard
Speaker 1: outer coat like normal seeds do, so any seeds that
Speaker 1: do form are just tiny dots inside the fruit, and
Speaker 1: you don't even know they're there. Someone discovered a plant
Speaker 1: with this genetic defect and started reproducing it through cut ins.
Speaker 1: Today's seedless grapes are all descendants from that original error.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works I Find app has arrived. Download it
Speaker 1: today on iTunes.