Abstract: The invention relates to a method for producing a seedless eggplant. The method involves crossing a tetraploid eggplant plant and a diploid eggplant plant to obtain a triploid eggplant seed, and growing a fruit-bearing eggplant plant from the triploid eggplant seed, whereby that fruit is seedless.

Abstract: Agrobacterium strains which have lost the capacity to proliferate vigorously in vitro or in planta, are provided, as well as transformation methods using these Agrobacterium strains.

Abstract: The invention is directed to a process for the generation of male sterility in plants comprising the steps of (a) transforming a plant cell with DNA sequences that selectively inhibit the expression of essential metabolic compounds and (b) regenerating plants from said plant cells. Cells impaired in the biosynthesis of basic metabolic compounds undergo starvation and eventually die. Such pathways include amino acid biosynthesis, nucleic acid biosynthesis and other biosynthetic pathways such as citric acid cycle, pentose phosphate pathway, fatty acid metabolism, vitamin biosynthesis that will render the cell inactive due to nutrient depletion, if one or more enzymes or proteins involved in this pathway would become inactive by using inhibitory DNA constructs.