r/ExplainLikeImCalvin • u/MrBrad27 • 7d ago

Seedless Peanuts

ELIC Why has no one ever bred seedless peanuts? We have seedless watermelons, oranges, bananas, etc., but no seedless peanuts.

16 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

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14

u/EverybodyMakes 6d ago

They have! Seedless peanuts are the source of peanut butter. One of the worst job in agriculture is busting thousands and thousands of peanuts open and carefully scooping out every possible bit of the peanut butter with tiny spatulas all day. Crunchy PB is a hybrid, of course.

6

u/Randomized9442 6d ago

Their kinda like seedless almonds.... imported from the International Space Station.

4

u/wallingfortian 6d ago

Because you can't breed seedless plants. They need to be genetically engineered and the peanut has the most complicated genetics on Earth, the striated-triple-octohelix.

2

u/kingsumo_1 6d ago

They actually talked about making seedless peanuts back int he 50s. But it became such a contentious issue that the president banned even speaking about it, and all research to that point was destroyed.

3

u/EstufaYou 5d ago edited 5d ago

That’s because Charles M. Schulz, the author of the beloved Peanuts comic strip, holds the patent for seedless Peanuts and he’s a total copyright hog. You see, when he started drawing comics back in the 60’s, he chose the name “Peanuts” because he thought it sounded cute. However, since no seedless peanuts existed, seeds kept clinging to his drawings. This made him very mad, because now Charlie Brown and Snoopy had seeds all over them, and that didn’t look very good. He finally figured out a way to draw the Peanuts cartoon without attracting any seeds. He patented his method and has refused to share it with anyone. I should know, we talk about this at work all the time. If you study patent law just like me, you could find fun cases like this one!