**3. Occurence of natural triploid loquats**

Exploitation of triploid plant to induce seedlessness is a promising breeding technique since triploid is a naturally existing ploidy status as found in other Rosaceae species. For example, approximately 10% of apple and pear varieties are triploids although the frequency of natural occurrence is less than one percent. In 1993, Liang et al. discovered that substantial frequency of natural triploid individuals exists in loquat germplasm. Since then, massive screening have been conducted in Chinese loquat germplasm, which has led to the selection of 352 natural triploid individuals out of 99,542 seeds in 36 varieties, the frequency of occurrence is about 0.35% (Table 1).


Table 1. Comparison between apple and loquat for the frequency of ploidy levels in natural crosses.
