Main image via Facebook
Lychee lovers, gather round because now, your favourite fruit has gone seedless!
Image via BeFresh
Tibby Dixon has spent the last 19 years of his life, developing the first seedless lychees growing in Australian.
Leaving the traditional path of growing trees solely for fruit, the farmer develops differen lychee varieties and sells the young plants to other farmers to grow.
But the North Queensland farmer’s prized possession is a single tree imported from China that cost $US5,000 (RM20,390) and after a lot of hard work, the farmer was able to harvest a few kilogram of the seedless fruit .
“The cultivar [variety] itself is a medium-sized fruit, [with] no seed, [and] very flavoursome,” said Tibby. “To me, it actually tastes like it has a bit of pineapple in it – that’s what my tastebuds tell me.”
“It’s very different to all the other cultivars we have,” he added.
Image via Facebook
If you’re wondering how Tibby was able to successfully create the new lychee variety, its all thanks to a process that involves both selective breeding and cross-pollinating flowers by hand over several generations of trees.
“First of all you have to start off with a really good cultivar, and then you get on with it and you keep cross-pollinating it,” he said. “[Then] hopefully somewhere down the line you can actually get something with a small seed, and from there you cross-pollinate again.”
“By chance you might end up with a seedless lychee,” he continued.
Image via Facebook
Based at Sarina Beach near Mackay, the variety is still in the early stages of development and has not yet been planted on a commercial scale.
“Within a couple of years we should have enough to sell out in commercial numbers,” said Tibby.
However, if you’re lucky, you can sample a seedless lychee by purchasing a kilogram of regular lychees from Macs Truckstop – a petrol station in Balberra, Queensland.
Would you love to taste these seedless lychees? Are you on #TeamSeed or #TeamNoSeed? Let us know!
Info via Mothership
Filled Under :
*We reserve the right to delete comments that contain inappropriate content.