Viewing post #1106929 by joseph
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| Up for oinking is a Possible Seedless Watermelon. I have been working for a few years on a project to develop seedless watermelons. My strategy is to grow together a diploid, and a possible tetraploid. Some percentage of the offspring can be expected to be seedless if the conversion to tetraploid was successful. This particular part of the project is really about confirming the conversion. It only takes one seedless melon to verify that it was successful. So the oink consists of two packets of seeds. 1) A diploid round striped melon with yellow flesh. It is one of the best performing melons in my landrace development project. 2) A possibly tetraploid version of Charleston Grey. It is a strain that has been grown by my daddy for decades. It is oblong and colored a light green. The flesh is red. Seedless melons are expected to be blocky (midway between round and oblong), and have striped skin, and orange fleshed. Both sets of seeds should be planted close together or even inter-planted. Melons that are off-type may be seedless. So a striped melon in the tetrapoid row may be seedless. And a non-round melon in the diploid row may be seedless. I am very interested in feedback on this project.... Did you get any seedless watermelons? Any pictures to share? In the worst case scenario, the conversion failed and you are growing two of the best performing melons that have emerged from my landrace development project. In a best case scenario, you find some seedless watermelons, and can save seeds from both parents, and replant them in equal numbers and continue with your own strain of seedless watermelons. My diploid melon could be substituted out for any other round striped melon. For maximum numbers of seedless melons the two strains should be inter-planted closely. For ease of observing what is going on, rows side-by-side might be better. In theory it should be obvious which is which. The way I generated the seed, either row might contain seedless melons. Here's what the parents of the cross looked like. Seedless melons aught to be striped and have a shape midway between the parents.  Author of Mother Earth News Blog about Landrace Gardening: http://www.motherearthnews.com/search.aspx?tags= Lofthouse |
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