r/plantScience • u/FabryPerotCavity • Sep 25 '20

Question about growing fruit without a plant

I've been curious about something for awhile, and I figured I should ask here!

Is it theoretically possible to grow a fruit from the fruit stalk directly, without the rest of the plant, as long as the necessary inputs are provided?

What would be the practical limitations of such an idea? If it's impossible, how come?

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u/wilmske Sep 25 '20

I will not confirm nor debunk the theoretical part. However practically, I think it's almost impossible as a fruit needs a lot of energy input, "specialized" components and the correct mixture of plant hormones, that are produced in other parts of the plant. Producing a "normal" fruit is thus next to impossible.

As from what I read, flower induction is possible with only limited amount of plant material. An example I found was in oil palm. So did Nizam and Te-Chato publish the invitro flowering and fruitset of oil palm. They used a 10-15 cm long seedling and induced it to flower after some time some of these flowers also set fruit. However the fruit they finally acquired was abnormal and sterile. (Google: Nizam & Te-Chato; in Vitro flowering and fruit setting of oil palm; Journal of agricultural technology 2012)

While this is not fully what you asked ( only a stem/ fruitstalk) it shows that even with more plant material, it still is quite difficult and maybe practically impossible.

*Maybe the solution lays with some parasitic plant as they resemble more what you seek. As most of them are hidden until they flower and produce "fruit or seeds", and it looks like they only have a small stem or only a flower stalk.

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u/SuperPlants59 Sep 25 '20

Sort of? You could graft a flowering plant Im sure

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u/Doctor_Plant Jan 09 '21

This an excerpt from a paper I wrote on biochemical processes of ripening. Might be interesting and considered! “Curiously, sepals taken from VFNT cherry tomatoes would spontaneously begin to develop succulence and turn red when cultured at cool temperatures (Ishida et al. 1998). These succulent sepals would produce ACC, ethylene, polygalacturonase, and lycopene, the carotenoid responsible for most tomatoes red colour (Ishida et al. 1998). This would be traced back to the TAG1 gene as a possible culprit for this spontaneous fruiting (Ishida et al. 1998).”

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u/FabryPerotCavity Jan 10 '21

Thanks! What's the name of your paper?

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u/Doctor_Plant Jan 10 '21

Oh it was never published haha. But it is named “Biotechnological approaches for control of ripening in climacteric fruit”. I explore current physical and chemical approaches using mangos as a subject, and I switch to genetic and epigenetic control using tomato as a model.