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relations director for Melissa’s Produce, a California distributor that sells only 10 percent of its watermelons with seeds. “It’s a question of ease, time, and there’s the safety factor. Kids couldchoke on the seeds.” You can’t blame producers for
giving people what they want, though as far as I can tell, child- hood mortality rates remain un- affected by the type of watermel- ons for sale. Nor should we let nostalgia be an obstacle to prog- ress. Seedless watermelons are
easier to eat, and it’s not only harried soccer moms who prefer them. Chefs such as Eric Ziebold at CityZen andTodd Gray of Equi- nox, both usually vocal propo- nents of heritage varietals, prefer seedless watermelons because they are more easily transformed into elegant cubes and fine dices. Still, as the end of summer
looms, I can’t help but mourn the inevitable disappearance of the black-dotted red watermelon. In part, it is a wistfulness for a classic American fruit and its traditions. Without seeds, there can be no seed-spitting contests
DEB LINDSEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Watermelons with seeds are not as popular with consumers, so producers are growing more of the seedless fruits. ROCKVILLE
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such as the one in Luling, Tex., home to an iconic watermelon water tower, or the one in Pardeeville, Wis., where the rules are strictly enforced: No profes- sional tobacco spitters. Denture wearers must abide by the judge’s decision if their teeth go farther than the seed. Though there is some debate
about it, the flavor of old-time watermelons might also be in jeopardy. And what a flavor to lose! In “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” Mark Twain described the true Southern watermelon as “a boon apart . . . when one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat.” Convenience, whether it’s a smaller size, a fruit without seeds or year-round availability, always seems to extract a price. And if that sounds alarmist, try to re- memberthe last great tomato you bought at a supermarket. The watermelon, or Citrullus
lanatus, belongs to a family of climbing vines that include cu- cumbers and gourds. And like all fruits, they naturally have seeds. The seedless versions are not ge- netically modified, as some might assume, but are hybrids that have been grown in the United States since the middle of the 20th century. Breeders match the pol- len from a diploid plant, one that contains 22 chromosomes per cell, and the flower of a tetraploid plant, which contains 44 chromo- somes per cell. The result is a triploid with 33 chromosomes that is incapable of producing seeds. (The tiny white ones you sometimes find are seed coats, where a seed did not mature.) Breeders call it the mule of the watermelon world. When farmers first began growing seedless watermelons,
they still needed seeded varieties to pollinate them. But that has changed, says Mark Arney, presi- dent of the watermelon board, who, for the record, has never spit a watermelon seed farther than 20 feet. Over the past five or six years, the same period when the share of seeded watermelons be- gan to drop precipitously at gro- cery stores, farmers began using so-called non-bearing pollina- tors. In other words, instead of planting a percentage of their fields with old-fashioned water- melons to pollinate, they plant another hybrid that produces the flowers that bees need but no actual fruit. I see the trend at local grocery
stores. I haven’t found any seeded melons at my local Safeway this summer or at the nearby Whole Foods Market, though a staff member there told me that they sometimes carry organic water- melons with seeds. The most reliable place to find old-school watermelons is the farmers market. That is not be- cause of any bias in favor of old-fashioned varieties. It’s be- cause seedless watermelons are more difficult and expensive to grow. Their seeds are most suc- cessful when germinated in a greenhouse rather than outdoors, and farmers must buy hybrid seeds for the pollinator plants. More than half of the watermel- ons grown atMontross,Va.-based Garner Produce, a regular at Washington markets, are seeded. At Spring Valley Farm and Or- chard in Morgan, W.Va., 60 per- cent of the melons have seeds. “It’s easier,” said JoeHeischman,a co-manager of the farm. “But I think the seeded ones also taste better. When we put out samples
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of both, people always say the seeded ones are sweeter.” That Mark Twain’s angels
would reject seedless watermel- ons is a fairly widely held belief among the minority of shoppers who have given the subject any thought. “I find seedless creepy, bland and oddly textured — sort of mealy,” said Colleen Levine, a 32-year-old government affairs consultant who writes the blog Foodietots. “Maybe it’s all in the name of
convenience. But I would never trade flavor just so I didn’t have to deal with seeds,” agreed Lisa Feng, a health-policy researcher atGeorgeWashingtonUniversity. “Thank goodness for internation- al markets that still carry these ‘burdensome’ fruits.” I decided to do a side-by-side comparison of seeded, seedless, yellow and the newly popular “personal” watermelons from Melissa’s Produce and one seeded melon from a local farmers mar- ket. The local melon was the run-
away favorite. “Crisp and sweet withmorethan just a sugar-water taste,” said one tester. “Yum! Oh my god, yum,” was the judgment of another. But the rest of the results didn’t
prove much.The runner-up was a seedless personal melon, which was sweet and refreshing but lacked the concentrated flavor of the local melon. Next came the seedless red and yellow melons, whichwereinoffensive butwhose primary asset was being cold on an August afternoon. Bringing up the rearwasthe California seeded melon, which was mealy and tasteless with more seeds than flesh, though in this case that wasn’t a bad thing.
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seeded varieties will disappear, at least in Alabama watermelon country. But he reckons that a greater public awareness of heir- loom varieties could help reverse producers’ relentless focus on convenience. Stitt remembers eating rattle-
snake watermelon when he was growing up, oblong fruits with light- and dark-green stripes, and sugar babies, smaller, round ones that are still common in markets today. There are a host of other heirloom varieties with romantic names, such as the white-fleshed Cream of Saskatchewan; Moun- tain Hoosier, which can grow to 75 pounds; and Charleston Gray, an old Southern favorite that is being revived by seed savers. The strategy has worked won-
ders for tomatoes. Tasteless, round red ones still predominate at grocery stores, but the fashion for lumpy, mottled and striped tomatoes has expanded the mar- ketandthe plant breeders’ race to develop a supermarket variety that actually tastes good. Are wa- termelons ready for a renais- sance? Champion seed spitters of the future should spread the word.
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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2010
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