Are Seedless Grapes GMO?

The more time that I’ve spent growing my own fruits and vegetables at home, the more varieties I began to grow.

It wasn’t long before I got my hands on a seedless grape vine but I couldn’t help but wonder, are grapes and other seedless fruits genetically modified? The short answer is, technically speaking, yes seedless grapes are indeed genetically modified. However, they’re not considered a GMO food, because seedless grapes have NOT been modified in a laboratory like other GMO foods.

Seedless varieties of grapes are a genetic mutation that occurred years ago, using a chemical process which caused grapes to be produced without seeds inside.

This happened while breeders tried to produce a larger-sized grape using a chemical hormone called gibberellin, which is derived from a fungus. Breeders used ancient techniques such as grafting and used cuttings to create more of the same plant, essentially, a natural form of cloning.

You might be thinking, isn’t any form of cloning considered genetic modification?

Well, sorta. This is where things get a little messy. I’ll do my best to explain.

If you’re still following me, let’s delve a little deeper into why exactly seedless grapes aren’t the GMO’s you might be thinking of.

What Exactly Is A GMO Food?

The term GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism and the term is actually quite vague.

The term “GMO” is typically used to refer to the process of inserting genetic material (DNA) from an unrelated organism into another organism’s DNA.

However, “technically” most fruits and vegetables are genetically modified because we have “modified” them for thousands of years through selective breeding or crossbreeding. Although, most people see these techniques as more natural than messing with DNA.

Selective Breeding

Selective breeding is a process of selecting the desired traits of a plant (size, taste, color, etc) and saving the seeds of that plant, in theory, creating more plants with those desired traits.

For example, saving seeds from your tallest sunflowers and planting them next year and then repeating the process will eventually give you a variety of sunflower that will likely be tall and so will the seeds that come after. This is how we got tall varieties of sunflowers such as: Russian Mammoth, Skyscraper, American Giant, and so on.

Crossbreeding

Crossbreeding happens is when pollen from one plant, pollenates another plant. This can happen either naturally, or purposely. Gardeners usually do this purposely in order to achieve new seeds with combined desired traits. These new varieties are typically called hybrids.

For example, you have a tomato variety that has huge 1-2 pound tomatoes and another variety that is drought-tolerant. Through cross-breeding, the seeds found in the tomatoes of these plants might possibly produce a new variety that has both traits.

Both of these types of hybrid “modifications” are considered natural but take time before you can see the results.

The New Term: Genetically Engineered (GE)

However, the term “GMO” doesn’t exactly describe the types of modifications that are being done to fruits and vegetables in laboratories today.

The foods being created in labs today are now being referred to as GE, or “Genetically Engineered” foods. This seems to be better description (sort of), as these types of foods have been engineered in a lab and modified down to the DNA molecules. Another term for these types of altered foods is transgenetic.

Changes that can normally take decades, can be done much faster with genetic engineering.

What’s The Problem With These Genetically Engineered Foods?

In nature, crossbreeding occurs naturally. This is how we get a lot of the new hybrid varieties. Grapefruits, for example, are a cross between a pomelo and an orange.

Unlike traditional methods, such as selective breeding, genetically engineered foods are created in labs and made with modifications that would NEVER occur in nature, even under the most extreme conditions.

For example, in nature, bacterium would never procreate with grains such as corn, however, genetically engineered corn has been modified at a cellular level to include genes from a bacteria known as BT or bacillus thuringiensis.

Although, bacillus thuringiensis is used in organic gardening for pest control, genetically modified BT corn is not considered organic.

When the bacterium is part of the corn, there is no controlling the levels of BT that is released to the soil, pests, or even us, when we consume it. Quite frankly, we don’t know the long term effects of any of these dramatic types of modifications on our food.

For these reasons, people believe genetically engineered foods are way too risky to consume without having been studied and researched long enough.

Unfortunately, many of us have become the lab rats due to the lack of independent studies verifying the safety and efficacy of genetically engineered food.

If Seedless Grapes Don’t Have Seeds, How Do We Get More Seedless Grapevines?

When you buy a seedless grape vine to grown in your own backyard, you are technically buying a clone of the original plant that mutated years ago.

Seedless fruit varieties are usually made by introducing a chemical that mutates the genes responsible for reproduction. These chemicals force a mutation that causes the offspring, of the fruits treated with the chemical, to produce seedless fruits.

However, the seedless grape varieties you get from your nursery or local gardens are “cuttings” of an already established seedless variety.

The cutting is planted and new roots will begin to grow and thus a new seedless grape vine is born, without having to mutate the genes over and over again. Sometimes cuttings are treated with a rooting hormone, but it’s not always needed.

So, Are Seedless Fruits And Hybrids Safe To Eat?

Yes, hybrids and seedless varieties are considered safe to eat and are just as nutritious as their counterparts. However, if you want to avoid anything made using chemical processes, I would avoid all seedless varieties all together, just to be safe.

Some hybrid varieties, like the pluot, can actually have more nutritional value, such as higher amounts of vitamin C and fiber content than plums or apricots. However, plums usually have more vitamin K and beta-cartotene.

Seedless varieties, however, lack the added nutritional value given from seeds, such as protein, omega-3 fats, and minerals. Although, it’s not that much more.

Hybrid Fruits And Vegetables

So, curious which fruits and vegetables are natural hybrids?

There are many hybrids out there and new ones “accidentally” happen all the time when pollen from one plant crosses with another plant, thanks to bees or other pollinators.

Here’s a list of some of the most commonly known natural hybrid species of fruits and vegetables out there:

• Grapefruit (Orange + Pomelo)
• Orangelo (Orange + Grapefruit)
• Broccoflower (Broccoli + Cauliflower)
• Plumcot (Plum + Apricot)
• Pluot (Plum + Apricot)
• Limequat (Lime + Kumquat)
• Spaghetti Pumpkin (Spaghetti Squash + Pumpkin)
• Pumpcchini (Pumpkin + Zucchini Squash)

Conclusion

So let’s recap and hopefully add some clarity.

Seedless grapes and other seedless varieties are technically genetically modified, because they were produced with the intention to modify their genes, using a chemical process. 

However, seedless varieties are NOT made in a lab and they do NOT have genes introduced into their gene pools from other organism, outside of their species kingdom.

The main differences with GMO varieties and hybrid varieties are that:

Hybrid varieties can occur naturally and involve ONLY genes from the same species kingdom.

GMO varieties, on the other hand, can have DNA genes from pretty much any plant, animal, or bacteria species and these varieties produced are modifications that would never occur naturally.

So are seedless varieties, hybrids and GMOs safe to eat?

According to the FDA, Yes. Seedless varieties, hybrids and GMOs have all been approved and deemed safe for human consumption.

However, if you’re trying to avoid eating food made with any sort of chemical process involved, you should avoid eating seedless and GMO varieties all together. Hybrid varieties, though, are produced through natural methods and are considered safe to consume, even if avoiding bio-engineered foods.

I hope this information helps. Healthy eating, everyone!