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.
Image via Camilleri's Farm Market on FB
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.
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.
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