Seedless fruit is grown from the seeds of a hybrid plant. A hybrid is a plant that was produced from two different varieties of plants.

Let's use watermelon as an example. When two specific types of watermelon are combined, it results in a hybrid that is sterile (a sterile organism cannot produce more offspring).

You plant the seeds from this hybrid watermelon fruit and you get a plant whose fruit matures but whose seeds are underdeveloped (seedless watermelon). This seedless watermelon is sterile because what few seeds you do find in it won't grow new watermelon plants.

'Scuse me, but . . . how do they grow more seedless fruit?

Guess you can't just plant more seeds, huh?

But, the fact is, you wouldn't want to plant seeds even if you could. Sexual reproduction, which is usually how seeded plants are grown, is too chancy because the offspring get a combination of features from both parents. Farmers want every piece of produce, from every tree or plant, year after year, generation after generation, to be identical.

Seeds won't quite work.

Luckily, sexual reproduction isn't the only way to grow new plants. There's also asexual reproduction. For plants, asexual reproduction means making copies of the parent plant by using techniques like cutting and grafting.

Therefore, the asexually reproduced offspring plants have the advantage of being perfect genetic duplicates of the parent plant (they have the exact same features).

So once you've genetically bred the ultimate navel orange or seedless watermelon you can crank out genetic duplicates a zillion times!

No seeds needed.

(Source: Triumph of the Straight Dope)

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