A lot of my fondest summer time reminiscences are centered across the juicy ripe purple coronary heart of a watermelon. My grandparents grew them within the sandy soil that surrounded their northwest Louisiana house, and each summer time after we’d go go to, I’d eagerly await the day that my grandfather mentioned that one was lastly able to eat. Sitting on the tailgate of somebody’s truck, I’d scarf the watermelon that had chilled within the deep freezer all day lengthy, spitting out the seeds at my toes.
Whereas I don’t miss this show of spitting in entrance of my pals and family members, I do miss the large seeded watermelons of my youth. These have gotten tougher and tougher to search out, each on grocery retailer cabinets and at farmers markets. In accordance with the Agricultural Advertising Useful resource Heart, seedless watermelons have dominated the market because the early 2000s, and beginning round 2014, a whopping 92 % of all watermelons shipped from farms have been seedless. However why, precisely, have they taken over because the dominant watermelon selection?
In accordance with Bob Hochmuth, a regional agent for the College of Florida’s Institute of Meals and Agricultural Sciences, there are a couple of causes for this large shift. When Hochmuth was rising up on a Maryland watermelon farm within the ’60s and ’70s, his household grew massive Jubilee and Charleston Grey watermelons to promote to melon-hungry shoppers. “Again then every part was a seeded watermelon, and the desire was for giant watermelons,” Hochmuth says. “There’s two issues that began to occur: the household unit acquired smaller, so individuals began wanting smaller watermelons, after which within the early Nineties got here the arrival of the seedless watermelon.”
Seedless watermelons had been first invented in Japan within the late Thirties, however they had been tough to develop and lacked resistance to illness. And, as a result of there have been no seeds with which to develop future melons, growers saved the crop going by shopping for or rising extra crops every year that might by no means produce any viable fruits. Within the early ’90s, advances in pollination and cultivation meant that the seedless watermelon slowly began to realize recognition throughout the nation, and by the 2000s, it was the dominant watermelon. For shoppers, Hochmuth says that the selection was simple. “It’s a comfort factor,” he says. “It’s simply simpler to eat the watermelon if you don’t need to take care of the seeds.”
There’s a sensible aspect to the seedless watermelon’s success, too: shelf life. Seedless watermelons last more on retailer cabinets and within the shopper’s kitchen than seeded varieties. The seeds inside a watermelon produce ethylene fuel, which causes the fruit to ripen quicker than seedless varieties. Should you’ve ever had a seeded watermelon that was mushy within the heart, you may blame the seeds for that textural nightmare. A seedless watermelon, then again, can maintain for weeks on the counter with none main impacts on taste and texture.
Hochmuth additionally doesn’t consider that seedless watermelons are inherently inferior to seeded watermelons, utterly busting my nostalgia-soaked concept. There are some slight distinctions between the 2: seedless watermelon flesh will be crisper and firmer, which many shoppers discover preferable. Hochmuth notes that the most effective qualities of a watermelon — how candy it’s, whether or not or not its flesh is crisp and juicy — will be discovered no matter whether or not the fruit has seeds.
And perhaps due to the seedless watermelon’s dominance, Hochmuth has noticed a small resurgence amongst seeded watermelon varieties. For some of us, the novelty of a yellow-fleshed or heirloom melon is extra engaging than a primary grocery retailer melon. The recognition of sorts like Black Diamond and Jubilee is surging, additionally maybe due partially to the nostalgia that folks really feel for these old-school seeded melons. This spring, watermelon farmers had been capable of demand increased costs for seeded watermelons than seedless for the primary time in many years.
“Shoppers are very interested by making an attempt one thing new, one thing totally different,” he says. “However there’s additionally a large sufficient group of oldsters who’re searching for that old-timey kind of watermelon.”
This can be a growth that makes me extremely excited. Now, within the lifeless of summer time, I’m often scoping out distributors to see which varieties of watermelons they’re providing, and there actually do appear to be much more seeded melons within the combine. And whether or not or not seeded is definitely any higher than seedless — Hochmuth insists that it’s not — I’m nonetheless thrilled at extra alternatives to indulge my nostalgia and spend the canine days of summer time spitting a couple of seeds from the again of a truck tailgate.
