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Post by pierre on Jul 30, 2010 8:34:29 GMT -5
Years ago a friend of mine brought back a dark green with minutes light green paterns small flat globe (mandarin) very hard very bitter white fleshed fruit from Lybian desert. From seed shape I identified a citrullus.
Why not breed a pocket watermelon.
One “unknown citrullus” seed germinated that I grew beside Golden Midget and Blacktail Mountain.
Bee crossed F1s were hard bitter white fleshed, intermediate apple to pomelo size, among the F2s some small fruited non bitter, pink, softer sweeter fleshed segregated. Some with green skin other yellow. One among the later was yellow from flower bud ovary.
Past year I grew these along with White Wonder and Bonanza a Sygenta modern 2kg icebox, red high flesh quality diploid F1 hybrid.
After a june flood, only three small plants survive that recently set one fruit each....so that it is a lost year for me.
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Post by toad on Dec 18, 2010 16:31:46 GMT -5
How did your pocket watermelons do this year?
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Post by pierre on Dec 20, 2010 11:22:57 GMT -5
Really bad as they as well as all my land were flooded by june 15. A few weeks after planting. All pumpkins survived, a few melons/watermelons gave me a very small harvest.
Would you like to try some, I have seeds from previous year. Best quality Bonanza bee polinated by sibs and other small fruited as I wrote. You can grow them on strings. If kept away of winds fruits hold well to maturity without help.
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Post by Hristo on Dec 20, 2010 13:20:34 GMT -5
Just saw this thread and it remind me that I had similar plans - to breed small watermelon variety. Mandarin size sound really small and I wonder how many and how big were the seeds? How thick was the rind? I.e. is there in enough flesh to eat?! My plan was to be as big as small orange, but because I expect the seeds in such small fruit to be really annoying, so my plan was to cross is with a tetraploid variety and to start praying the resulted seedless variety to be small enough  . Then because of the people here realized that the tetraploids are troublesome to work with, so I forget that project until now. |
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Post by pierre on Dec 20, 2010 14:49:58 GMT -5
I know there are seeded watermelons whose seeds are regular tomato seed size. One can swallow. Bonanza has rice grain sized seeds as were the wild citrullus. Low seed number is selectable too.
My mandarin sized watermelons were hard white and quite bitter fleshed. Seeds were medium small about 5mm. I am looking for 1kg ones. Crossing the 2kg that are available with my small apple to pomelo size ones. Rind thickness is variable as Golden Midget and Bonanza are thin rinded.
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Post by pierre on Dec 21, 2010 7:08:14 GMT -5
Commercially, watermelon seeds are categorized by size: long (or large), medium, short (or small) (approximately 10, 7, and 5 mm long), and tomato seed (watermelon seeds the size of tomato seeds). According to Poole et al. (1941), the l and s genes interact to determine seed size for the long, medium, and short classes (ll SS for long, LL SS for medium, and LL ss or ll ss for short). The tomato seed size was studied in a cross between a 'Sugar Baby' mutant with tomato seed size and 'GN-1', with short seeds. The tomato seed size trait was inherited as a single recessive gene (ts) (58). The interaction of ts with l and s has not been described so far. In addition, a gene (Ti), dominant over medium seeds, has been described for the so-called "tiny" seed-size in 'Sweet Princess' (50). Tiny seeds have size similar to small seeds.
Cucurbit Genetics Cooperative Report 28-29: 52-61 (2005-2006) 55
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Post by Hristo on Dec 23, 2010 13:12:53 GMT -5
This project is of very low priority for me, so I didn't research the subject a lot. This is very interesting! I didn't knew about these "tomato sized seed" gene. That should be small enough I think. I have of the "small" ones, about 5 mm., but even they will be annoying in a small fruit.
Now I wonder why this trait is not used in the commercial varieties. I imagine sprouting of these seeds will be harder. They will require shallow sowing where is warmer, but drier too. Hmm...
According to the text (found and the full document) there are 4 sizes: "large", "medium", "small", "tiny" (similar size as "small") and "tomato seed". 'Sweet Princess' has "tiny" seed. Does anyone know variety with "tomato seed"?
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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 23, 2010 16:26:51 GMT -5
I'm waiting with baited breath - yes, tomato seed size would be super useful.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 23, 2010 16:37:13 GMT -5
Speaking of odd watermelon genes, I seem to recall something once that said than in additon to the flesh colors we are familiar with for watermelon (white,pink,salmon,and orange) some strains of wild C. lanatus had green interior flesh and that this trait could sometimes show up when wild and domestic watermelon were crossed. As some of this micromelon work seems to involve just that, crossing wild melon into domestic, I feel that it might be possible to bring green flesh into the edible melon world. I know nothing of the breeding of these micromelons myself (most of my watermelons have been baseball to basketball sized but that's becuse I'm not great at growing them) but I know that, if a green fleshed watermelon existed, I certainly like to try and grow it.
This also reminds me a little of an odd experiance from my cildhood. One year when I was a kid we were at the local nursery in the fall, picking out gourds for our autum displays. One of these gourds I picke dout was really odd; aside from being the size of a baseball, it was the spitting image of a honeydew melon. To make things creepier, whne at the end of the season I cut it open, it smelled like a honeydew as opposed to the normal "pumpkin" smell gourds usually have. (though the seed presumably looked like normal gourd seed, even back then I would have likey noticed if the seed was melon like) I did save the seed, but this was back when I was a kid so the seed is, alas long since gone.
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Post by Hristo on Dec 23, 2010 20:42:35 GMT -5
... some strains of wild C. lanatus had green interior flesh... Indeed! I was surprised when I learned about that this summer. Apparently it's caused by high chlorophyll content. But I have not seen photo of such watermelon, so I suppose it's light green instead of dark, but who knows it might be dark green (I have seen dark green flesh in moschata squash, so why not in watermelon too) |
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 24, 2010 8:45:29 GMT -5
... some strains of wild C. lanatus had green interior flesh... Indeed! I was surprised when I learned about that this summer. Apparently it's caused by high chlorophyll content. But I have not seen photo of such watermelon, so I suppose it's light green instead of dark, but who knows it might be dark green (I have seen dark green flesh in moschata squash, so why not in watermelon too) If I was to guess off the top of my head, I'd tend to imagine it as being roughly the shame shade of green as a honedew melon (the orange color of orange watermelons is roughly the same as that of a cantelope, so the color saturation levels in the two genera may be similar). BTW slight correction to my earlier statement (re the mini melon of my childhood), it was white flesh so it actually resembled an asian or a crenshaw melon, not a honeydew (I actually don't really like the taste of any melon except watermelon, so have not had much experiance with the innder colors of the others) |
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Post by toad on Dec 24, 2010 10:32:36 GMT -5
Would you like to try some, I have seeds from previous year. YES - I would love it. ;D I'll send you a PM |
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Post by pierre on Dec 25, 2010 9:15:52 GMT -5
My wild and some derived from watermelons were bitter and rather dull white not green. Just same color as the "citrons" or "Pasteque a confiture" that have non sweet hard whitish flesh that cooks so delicious, translucent and soft. I have never seen green flesh.
I will send to the asking ones Bonanza (2kg highest quality red flesh, thin skin, small seeded) OP (bee crossed) seeds from plants grown close to my wild derived and segregating smaller ones and White Wonder (2kg good quality white flesh, thick skin, medium seeded).
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Post by pierre on Jul 6, 2011 14:29:23 GMT -5
Hristo wrote: Now I wonder why this trait is not used in the commercial varieties.
I just bought and ate at the local supermarket a miniature watermelon: 2,6 kg dark green striped skin on lighter green. Thick skin, taste not the best. I bought it as a sample was halved showing very small seeds. Just like some big tomato seeds and definitely smaller than the Bonanza ones.
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Post by raymondo on Jul 7, 2011 1:36:29 GMT -5
Did the seeds look viable?
Watermelon grows wild here and I collected one a month or so back. It's the size of a softball, perhaps slightly smaller. I haven't cut it open yet to see what's inside.
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. Then because of the people here realized that the tetraploids are troublesome to work with, so I forget that project until now.
