Wonderful seedless lemons are natural—some shoppers don't believe it

The Wonderful Citrus President, Zak Laffite, raves about the convenience of seedless lemons. The fruit itself became a kitchen staple in its own right, as it no longer suffers from the ups and downs of taste and favorability. If consumption changes, it's probably growing.

As their name states, seedless lemons lack those pesky seeds that, while necessary for propagation and sometimes even for cooking, also tend to get in your food or beverages. So, it's no wonder that seedless lemon consumption, which Wonderful reports has grown 30%, has become very popular very quickly. Laffite even said the product is a possible market disruptor. 

But some are skeptical. The absence of seeds in the fruit has sparked consumer debate over whether seedless fruits should be labeled “natural.”

On social media, a select group of grocery shoppers expressed shock about the use of the "naturally" label on the company’s seedless lemon bags. (Granted, a handful were just appalled to see a lemon with no seeds, and a few are simultaneously curious about both.) The concern is that original lemons are being tampered with and therefore no longer belong under the “natural” category. However, the methods used to create the variety were not genetic engineering, but rather traditional breeding techniques such as hybridization, inbreeding, and backcrossing.

Wonderful Company’s seedless lemon was built on a discovery made by farmers in Australia and South Africa. After years of studying lemon buds and using different breeding techniques, they found seedless lemon trees in their orchards. And even though the names might sound complicated, plant breeders have been using these techniques for centuries to recognize and propagate plants with selective qualities. They rely heavily on phenotype-based selection, meaning they observe physical traits of the plant and its fruit to produce desired specimens.

The variety was not obtained using recombinant DNA techniques, only human intervention. Since breeders made no changes to the genome, seedless lemons are natural and proud wearers of the non-GMO label. And if you're wondering about propagation, know that there's more to just seeds. This type of citrus propagates using a long-known method called budding. For it, breeders remove a bud or scion from an existing seedless lemon tree and replant it in the existing rootstocks of other trees.

There is actually nothing novel about seedless citrus fruit, said Laffite. “I’m sure that people 40 or 50 years ago started to say, 'Wait, why do these navel oranges have no seeds?'” he explained. “It’s just a different variation of the fruit.”

So next time you find a seedless lemon at the produce aisle, remember there's nothing unnatural about them: the variety was created and is propagated through human selection. And it'll taste just as good as other lemons, just without the inconvenience of having to fish out seeds from your lemonade.