May We Interest You in a Seedless Lemon?
Certainly worse problems exist in the world, but lemon seeds can be annoying. How often have you squeezed lemon into a glass of water only to watch it turn into a pool party for seeds? And if keeping an eye out for fish bones isn’t enough of a nuisance, suddenly you can find yourself pulling double duty on lemon seed watch, too. But the large California-based Wonderful Company wants to make lemon seeds a thing of the past, and the future may be closer than you think.
Starting this month, Wonderful—which is also known for brands like Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful juices, and Wonderful Pistachios—will be introducing Wonderful Seedless Lemons at grocery chains across the country. Wonderful bills this “naturally seedless, Non-GMO Project verified variety of lemon” as “juicy and zesty—everything consumers love about lemons minus the inconvenient seeds,” making “preparing cocktails and cooking even easier.”
As the Los Angeles Times explains, seedless lemons aren’t new; however, the efforts to find a viable commercial variety have only become fruitful recently. And since Wonderful is a large company with exclusive U.S. rights to two of the best new seedless lemon varieties in the biz, they’ve reportedly decided to make a big seedless lemon push.
Etienne Rabe, vice president of horticulture for Wonderful Citrus told the Times that, in just a few years, he sees Wonderful Seedless Lemons accounting for 10 percent of the entire lemon market, and eventually, he think seedless could replace lemons with seeds almost entirely. Furthermore, Wonderful is apparently prepared to put their money where their mouth is with a massive marketing campaign. The Times even teased the possibility of Tom Brady passing a seedless lemon in a Super Bowl ad.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves: For now, you’ll be able to find bags of Wonderful Seedless Lemons in stores from November through May, which coincides with the California growing season. By 2021, Wonderful hopes the lemons will be available year-round once farms in Mexico are up and running.
