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The original title: "the reason why pineapples have no pineapple seeds is." The sea is too big. "

Write an article | Seven Jun

It's pineapple season now. When eating pineapple, I wonder if you have considered this question: why does pineapple have no seeds?

Unlike watermelons, pineapples do not have seeds mainly because of biotechnology, but the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

(photo Source: pexels) things start with the origin of pineapples.

Pineapple (Ananas comosus) is native to South America and belongs to the family Bromeliaceae. It is the third largest tropical fruit in the world, after bananas and lemons, and is the only edible and most valuable species in the pineapple family.

Pineapple seeds (photo: wikimedia) unlike triploid seedless watermelons, the pineapples we usually eat do grow seeds. If the pineapple has seeds, it grows under the skin. It is brown, hard and tastes bad. However, this is not the main reason why artificially grown pineapples are seedless.

Pineapple does not grow on trees, thank you (photo source: wikimedia) Pineapple has no seeds, mainly because once the pineapple grows seeds, it will not taste good.

This has something to do with the special skill points of pineapples.

Like most species, pineapple has a "heart" that rises every day. It is called shoot apex. The tip of the seedling is always rubbing up and growing, and then becomes a leaf. When the leaves are long enough, flowers will grow at the tip of the seedling. This pineapple blossom is actually the pineapple we eat.

The shoot tip of the pineapple (top) (photo source: (DOI) 10.1007Universe) Yes, the flesh of the pineapple is not its fruit, but the ovary under the pineapple flower. The hard, pointed square protrusions on the pineapple shell are actually withered flowers and bracts.

The shell of a pineapple has many sharp points, right, so a pineapple is actually a coalesced multiple fruit formed by hundreds of flowers and the ovaries below it.

Uncle policeman, this is the plant genital thief who has not given birth to offspring.

The ovary of a pineapple (referred to by ovaries in figure E) (photo source: (Online ISBN) 9781118967355) can have "results" without "results"?

This is the special skill of pineapple: it can grow "fruit" without pollination or seed bearing.

But what happens if the pineapple is forcibly pollinated?

Pineapple flowers can be beautiful alone when they are not pollinated and try their best to make themselves delicious. But when the pineapple is really pollinated, the pineapple will use its energy to raise seeds instead of growing fruit, and the pineapple will not be so delicious.

In addition, once the pineapple is pollinated, the hard seeds will make the pineapple harder than the human mouth.

It is these two points that prevent pineapples from being pollinated.

Pineapple flowers (photo source: wikimedia) wait, there are so many bees in the world, aren't pineapple flowers easy to pollinate?

This is the unexpected benefit of the group CP.

I just said that pineapples come from America. In fact, there are very few natural pollinators in pineapples. Insects, including bees, cannot pollinate them. Pineapples have their own pollinators, and they are hummingbirds from America.

Most of the plants of the pineapple family come from tropical America, and they rely almost entirely on "fellow" hummingbirds for pollination. Therefore, the evolution of pineapple plants is also directly affected by hummingbirds.

Hummingbirds have excellent vision and like long, brightly colored flowers (photo: wikimedia) for example, the flowers of the pineapple family have grown into the favorite appearance of hummingbirds: bright, slender, with honey underneath. In fact, this is why the flowers of the pineapple family are mostly bright red.

This kind of mutual going is also exclusive. Not to mention that the long flowers match the hummingbird's beak, and pineapple flowers usually have no platform for insects to land, so they are very unfriendly to insects.

Pineapple flowers are like this. Pineapple flowers cannot be pollinated by bees, and bees ignore pineapples. Only hummingbirds that can fly while talking can enjoy the honey in the pineapple blossoms.

Hummingbirds (photo source: Internet) and in order to avoid attracting bats and beetles, most flowers of the pineapple family have no fragrance. It doesn't matter to hummingbirds, because hummingbirds have good eyesight but a poor sense of smell.

And because hummingbirds are energy-intensive creatures, they are reluctant to migrate, let alone cross the ocean, unless there is a lot of sweet water at their destination, so until now we can only see hummingbirds in America.

On the pineapple side, when they are taken to other parts of the world, they lose their exclusive pollination CP and instead become tasty fruit and pizza Terminators according to human thinking.

All in all, the natural CP of hummingbirds and pineapples is really easy for growers.

In order to prevent hummingbirds, hummingbirds are even banned in some places, such as Hawaii.

Hawaiian pineapple (photo: wikimedia) in the 1930s, the Hawaiian Islands were the largest producer of canned pineapples in the world, and the canned pineapple industry was once one of Hawaii's pillar industries. Now Hawaii is an important producer of fresh pineapples, mainly for the United States. Therefore, Hawaii is particularly afraid that hummingbirds will destroy the pineapple farming industry after entering the country, and the Hawaiian Bureau of Agriculture explicitly forbids the entry of hummingbirds.

The Hawaiian Agriculture Bureau banned hummingbirds from entering the country. (photo source: hdoa.hawaii.gov/ wp-content / uploads / 2012 take 12 / AR-71P.pdf) in fact, hummingbirds cannot be brought anywhere in the United States because of the Migratory Bird Treaty (Migratory Bird Treaty), and it is illegal to hold a hummingbird's nest in the United States.

A 1966 stamp issued by the United States to commemorate the migrant Bird Treaty (photo: public domain), but then again, the pineapple and hummingbird group CP also has many disadvantages. For example, the exclusive pollination of pineapple makes it difficult for us to eat a new variety of pineapple.

As I just said, pineapples cannot seed naturally without hummingbird pollination. This actually depends on a necessary condition: the pollen of the pineapple flower cannot fertilize itself, that is, "selfing", otherwise the pineapple pollen will accidentally stick to the pistil of the same flower and will still bear seeds.

It is also because it can not be self-bred, the research and development of new pineapple varieties has experienced a long history.

Until now, the world's leading pineapple variety is unstabbed cocaine, or Smooth Cayenne, the kind that was canned in Hawaii 100 years ago, with a 70 per cent global market share.

On the other hand, the artificial cultivation of pineapple depends on "copy and paste", that is, vegetative reproduction (cut and insert). Among them, we usually finish eating the pineapple and plant the leaves above to get a new pineapple, thus realizing the freedom of the pineapple.

The leaf sequence of non-thorn caine (left) is 8 or 13, which is different from other varieties (photo source: itfnet.org). It was not until 1996 that the Hawaiian Pineapple Research Institute (Pineapple Research Institute of Hawaii) developed MD-2, a sweeter, more yellow and more expensive variety, which mainly occupies the European and American market.

At this point, the story of pineapple is far from over.

You may have heard that when you eat pineapple, pineapple eats you, too, because pineapple meat and its plants contain proteases that break down proteins. In fact, the tender meat powder for cooking (food additive E1101)-pineapple protease (Bromelain) is extracted from pineapple plants.

Protease can break down protein, causing pain to animals that eat it, which is good for pineapple to protect itself. However, since pineapples do not want to be eaten, why do they turn on the default long pineapple mode without pollination? This delicious pineapple is for which warrior who is not afraid of bad mouth? Is this animal still in America?

This is probably another sweet and spicy evolutionary story.

Is it possible that:

Seedless-> delicious-> after eating rotten stomach-> sudden-> become fertilizer-> pineapple health value UP

Reference:

Https://docs.qq.com/doc/DVEZGWW11aXJmQUhI

This article is from the official Wechat account: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids), author: everything.

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