An Australian farmer has successfully developed seedless lychees after more than 19 years of hard work.

Tibby Dixon, a farmer from Sarina Beach in North Queensland, has spent the past few decades developing lychee varieties and selling young plants to other farmers, ABC news reports.

Seedless lychees are medium-sized and very flavoursome

The highlight however, has to be the propagation of a seedless variety of lychees from a single tree he had spent US$5,000 (S$6,752) on to import from China.

Dixon, who has been a farmer for more than 40 years, states that these seedless lychees are "medium-sized" and "very flavoursome", The Daily Mail reports.

They apparently also taste like they have a bit of pineapple in them.

Cross-pollination and selective breeding of flowers to achieve seedless lychee

According to Dixon, the process of developing multiple lychee varieties involves the cross-pollination and selective breeding of flowers by hand.

Cross-pollination occurs when pollen from the male part of a lychee flower is transferred by hand to the female part of the flower on a different variety.

This takes place over multiple generations of trees, starting off with "a really good cultivar", Dixon states.

According to the same ABC article, a small seed develops through time and from there, one will have to cross-pollinate the flower again.

As this process requires a lot of time and skill, the pollen is sometimes kept until the flowers are more receptive.

Dixon also says that it is "by chance" that one might end up with a seedless lychee.

Seedless lychees should be commercially available within a couple of years

As these seedless lychees are still in the early stages of development, they have yet to be planted on a commercial scale.

However, one can still sample a seedless lychee if they purchase a kilogram of regular lychees from Macs Truckstop, a petrol station in Balberra, Queensland.

Dixon has harvested a few kilograms of seedless lychees this year and wants to focus on growing a crop of trees that will one day bear such seedless lychees on Australian farms.

He also estimates that farms should have enough produce to sell out in commercial numbers within a couple of years.

Top image via Camilleri's Farm Market on Facebook