Originally developed by a scientist in Japan pre-WWII, the technology was picked up by watermelon breeding programs at universities in the South-East U.S. Over the next 30 years the university programs worked to develop the technology. Progress was very slow as it takes 15 generations to create a new female line.
Unfortunately for everyone the universities decided to use their tasteless, bland, long distance shipping types to create these females. The most famous of which is Charleston grey.
Finally in the mid-70’s the universities released the female inbreds to private companies to create seedless watermelons. The private companies crossed tasty, elongated allsweet and crimsons sweet types as a diplod male with the bland grey females. What resulted was the bland seedless types with large white pips and bland flavor. After all 2/3rd of the genetics came from those terrible females.
For the next 25 years all of the seedless watermelons used the same terrible female lines with slightly improved male lines.
Then a breeder from originally from China decided to create new females. He used small seeded varieties from China and Thailand with deep red color and much thinner rinds.
The resulting seedless watermelons had dark red color, tiny little pips, and a slightly bitter flavor. You see the breeder from China failed to recognize the different flavor profiles in the gene pools. Asian watermelons often have bitter flavors that are completely acceptable in those markets but not in European ones.
And thus we are stuck with bland or bitter shitty seedless watermelons at the store.
There was once a brave lady who attempted to buck the trend. She bred the most flavorful delicious seedless watermelon ever seen on the planet. It was almost honey sweet with strong aromatics and not a hint of bitterness. It was crisp and juicy without a hint of mealyness. It was large elongated and looked just like the good old seeded ones. Alas the market rejected them because “they look like seeded types”. She retired early with a big FU to them all.
The story of seedless watermelons.
Originally developed by a scientist in Japan pre-WWII, the technology was picked up by watermelon breeding programs at universities in the South-East U.S. Over the next 30 years the university programs worked to develop the technology. Progress was very slow as it takes 15 generations to create a new female line.
Unfortunately for everyone the universities decided to use their tasteless, bland, long distance shipping types to create these females. The most famous of which is Charleston grey.
Finally in the mid-70’s the universities released the female inbreds to private companies to create seedless watermelons. The private companies crossed tasty, elongated allsweet and crimsons sweet types as a diplod male with the bland grey females. What resulted was the bland seedless types with large white pips and bland flavor. After all 2/3rd of the genetics came from those terrible females.
For the next 25 years all of the seedless watermelons used the same terrible female lines with slightly improved male lines.
Then a breeder from originally from China decided to create new females. He used small seeded varieties from China and Thailand with deep red color and much thinner rinds.
The resulting seedless watermelons had dark red color, tiny little pips, and a slightly bitter flavor. You see the breeder from China failed to recognize the different flavor profiles in the gene pools. Asian watermelons often have bitter flavors that are completely acceptable in those markets but not in European ones.
And thus we are stuck with bland or bitter shitty seedless watermelons at the store.
There was once a brave lady who attempted to buck the trend. She bred the most flavorful delicious seedless watermelon ever seen on the planet. It was almost honey sweet with strong aromatics and not a hint of bitterness. It was crisp and juicy without a hint of mealyness. It was large elongated and looked just like the good old seeded ones. Alas the market rejected them because “they look like seeded types”. She retired early with a big FU to them all.
Wow, humans dumb.