Re: Why wouldn't seedless strawberries be commercially profitable?

What we commonly call strawberry seeds are actually the fruits, which are termed
achenes. The edible part of the strawberry is the enlarged receptacle of the
flower. 

Have you found commercially available seedless strawberry jams and jellies to
still contain seeds? If you bought large strawberries, wouldn't it be relatively
easy to grate or peel off the outside layer with the seeds and still have most
of the fruit left to eat?

You might be correct that there is a niche market for fresh seedless
strawberries. Consumers will often spend a lot of extra money for organic
produce when there are no proven health benefits for it. The problem is that
fresh strawberries are very perishable so could not be shipped mail order very
easily. It may be possible with refrigerated containers and overnight delivery.
You might find it more efficient to market frozen seedless strawberries. 

I cannot say for sure whether growing seedless strawberries would be a
profitable business and the man-hours required to produce them. I'm not even
sure that a seedless strawberry would be worth eating. I know of no such
business. You might want to contact the fruit experts at your state university
to ask their opinions.

You should be able to experiment with growing seedless strawberries. The first
challenge will be to to avoid pollination and seed production. You should be
able to prevent most pollination by growing strawberries in screen cages.
However, screen cages alone might not be completely effective. Hand removing the
anthers to prevent pollination would be very labor intensive. 

The ideal plant for production of seedless strawberries would be a variety
without stamens or with cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS). Some older varieties
were reported to lack stamens. There has been at least a little research on CMS
in strawberry. 

With either a male sterile variety or a fertile variety with stamens manually
removed, you would have to spray the flower with a plant hormone to promote
fruit development. Auxin has worked in research studies where developing
strawberry seeds were removed by hand. You might also try gibberellin or cytokinin. 

Gibberellin or auxin would be best because both are already widely used on
seedless grape and home tomato crops, respectively, so they are considered safe
for use on food crops. Cytokinins are not used on food crops so would probably
not be acceptable. You might first try the blossom set product sold for home
tomato growers. It contains auxin. A potential side effect of gibberellins is
that they promote stem elongatio, which might be undesirable for the plants.

I have not seen the last reference but it might contain some useful information.

References


Strawberry pollination requirements


Re: Why are Strawberry Seeds on the outside of the fruit?


Re: how would you form a seedless strawberry?


Auxin-seedless strawberry experiment


Islam A.S. (1958) Seedless strawberry.  Pakistan J. Biol. Agric. Res.
(Pakistan)1: 166-167.