Choosing a variety:

There are hundreds of cultivars available for production and contain much diversity.

Watermelons range in shape from round to oblong. Rind colors can be light to dark green with or without stripes. Flesh colors can be dark red, red or yellow.

Selection of a cultivar for production should be based on the optimal yield and profit that can be obtained. Also, the market availability of seed or transplants, and cultural conditions of the site should be taken into consideration.

Selecting varieties acceptable for your market is important. Planting a variety that is not suited for the available market and the particular production situation leads to lower profits or possibly crop failure.

In addition to market acceptability, a variety must have acceptable yield and amount of accumulated sugars, be adapted to the production area (drought tolerance), and have the highest level of needed insect and disease resistance available.

Watermelon varieties fall into three broad classes based on how the seed was developed:

Open-pollinated:

Open-pollinated varieties are developed through several generations of selection.
The selection can be based upon yield, quality characteristics and disease resistance.

Open-pollinated varieties have true-to-type seed (seed saved from one generation to the next will maintain the same characteristics) and are less expensive then F1 hybrid varieties.

F1 hybrid:
Hybrid crosses are beginning to take rise to the watermelon industry.

F1 hybrids are developed from two inbred lines that have been selfed for several generations and then crossed, with the subsequent seed sold to growers.

F1 hybrid seed will exhibit increased uniformity of type and time of harvest compared with open-pollinated seed and can exhibit as much as a 20 percent to 40 percent increase in yields over open-pollinated varieties grown under similar conditions.

The disadvantages of F1 hybrid seed are cost and availability. F1 hybrid seed will be as much as five to 10 times as costly as open-pollinated seed, and available F1 hybrid varieties will change from year to year.

Triploid (seedless):

These are developed by creating watermelon plants with double the usual chromosome number (tetraploid male plant ) and crossing them with normal watermelon plants (diploid female plant).

The seeds from this cross-breeding will germinate and grow into a plant that have one-and-a-half times the normal chromosome number. Consequently, they can bears flowers, but the flowers will not produce viable sperm-bearing pollen or eggs because of the odd number of chromosome sets. Because of this, seeds are not usually formed.

Triploid seeds will be even more expensive than F1 hybrid seeds, and the melons should command a premium in the marketplace.

Although triploid watermelons are referred to as seedless, they are not truly seedless but rather have undeveloped seeds that are soft and edible.

Growth-promoting hormones produced by the developing seed enhance fruit enlargement in seeded watermelons. Because triploid melons do not contain developing seed, they require pollen to stimulate fruit growth. This creates a problem because triploid plants are essentially sterile and produce little, if any, pollen. The solution is to interplant rows of seeded pollenizer melons with rows of triploid watermelons.

Keep in mind that melons from the pollenizer variety must be easily separated from the triploid melons at harvest. The normal cultivar chosen usually has a different rind color or pattern from the seedless variety.

Make sure the seeded melons are also acceptable to your buyers because about one-third of all the melons produced will be from the seeded pollenizer.

Because seedless types do not put energy into seed production, the flesh is often sweeter than normal types and the vines are noticeably more vigorous as the season progresses.

Watermelons are also grouped according to fruit size and shape (Watermelons range in shape from round to oblong), color of rind (Rind colors can be light to dark green with or without stripes), flesh (Flesh colors can be dark red, red or yellow), and seeds (can range in color from black to white).