I didn’t even know seedless watermelons were a thing, so it saddens me to discover that they are, and that they’re bad, since the main reason I don’t like watermelons is having to deal with the seeds.
They are not all bad. In the early 2000’s a breeder created a logistical method create tetraploids in 6 years (5 generations every 2 years). He used 3 countries to do it in if I recall correctly.
He integrated some of the small seeded deep red fleshed Chinese germplasm combined with the old flavorful allsweet types to make dramatically improved tetraploids.
Other companies have followed suit and the average quality of the fruit has improved. Some of the newer ones have really excellent flavor.
They do. I had this conversation the other day, and it led to Bill Gates trying to to basically monopolize farming. It was right before a five-hour meeting and so I forgot to research it at all after, but you have just reminded me.
Back on topic though, I can’t find seedless watermelons anywhere. I live in Jersey (New), and my local supermarket is and has been seedless for at least a decade. I can’t recall the last time I enjoyed watermelon with a seed. My presumption was that they’re stopping us from growing them at home. I’m sure it’s much more (or less) nuanced than that. I’m an idiot.
Watermelons are not true to seed- a watermelon grown from a collected seed will not necessarily resemble it’s parent. But surprise melons are fun! Usually not as sweet as those with carefully controlled genetics though.
It’s all about profits. Seedless watermelons usually sell better with American consumers.
In order to produce fruit on triploid watermelons there has to be regular seeded (diploid) varieties in the field. Traditionally they would use a large oblong traditional seeded (allsweet types). Mainly because there was a market for them and they looked different than the seedless varieties.
The growers had to dedicate 1/5th of their acres to growing a seeded melons which they could sell at 50% or less than seedless varieties.
That’s when seed companies introduced dedicated pollinators (non-harvested). These untilized several different dwarf genes and could be interplanted with seedless varities with no loss of space.
With the exception of the big party markets like the 4th of July, most fields utilize the dedicated pollinators in the U.S. now. For production in Latin America, they export the seedless ones to the U.S. and sell the seeded ones l ones domestically.
Bottom line, today you only occasionally seeded watermelons in grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada.
Now why seedless watermelons suck is an interesting story.
The first intentional creation of a seedless watermelon was done in 1939 in Japan. University breeding programs in the southern U.S. after WWII began using the technology to create the first hybrids. In the early '50’s and '60’s multiple tetraploids were created by the university programs and released to private companies to produce seed with.
These tetraploid lines were “greys”. “Greys” were selected to have a thick hard rind for long distance shipping. They were barely red on the inside and tasted slightly bitter. They all sucked for flavor.
A seedless watermelon hybrid is made by crossing a tetraploid female by a diploid male. The resulting hybrid (triploid) has 3 copies of every chromosome and is sterile.
Fertile stable tetraploids take a long time to create - around 15 generations of you are lucky. Seedless watermelons also took a long time to gain popularity in the market. So nobody put significant money or time into creating more tetraploid inbreds for over 40 years.
From the 1980’s when seedless watermelons were introduced until around 2010, everyone used those shitty old tetraploids as 2/3rds of the hybrid. Since 2010 companies have created new tetraploid to use, but a significant portion still use 70 year old shitty ones.
If God doesn’t want us fucking with their creations, they’re more than welcome to hold a press conference.
Until then, I’ll keep assuming they’re emotionally crippled howard Hughes style in the Heaven Penthouse drinking their own divine urine and shouting random conspiracies about which Angel is gonna pull a Lucifer next.
Funny thing is they aren’t even GMOs, they’re hybrids between tetraploid and diploid watermelon cultivars. You could do it yourself in your backyard if you can find tetraploid seed for sale, or make it yourself with colchicine
Also like, 100% of all agriculture and livestock. Fuck. Look at what we did to wolves. If god didn’t want us to fuck around with genetics they wouldn’t have made them malleable.
Obviously agriculture is a lie. Cows and sheep and donkeys and chickens and dogs always existed exactly as they do now since that’s how God made them and they never changed.
i hate GMO because it often is unhealthy and often is unethical (sterile so the farmers have to buy new seeds every year instead of being able to use the seeds that came off of their harvest)
U being wrong. Gmos NOT being sterile is actually one of thw bad characteristics because theyre copyrighted if ur a farmer and GMO seeds drift into your field thats grounds to get sued on
Not to beat a dead horse but do you know how we get/got novel variation in crops before targeted DNA technology? It mostly wasn’t wild germpasm unless you happen to work with a crop with large amounts of historically documented pools, e.g. corn and wheat. No, most historical breeding programs use mutagens, either chemical or sometimes radioactive, to cause novel variation, grow the seed, see what looks interesting and not too weird, and cross it back into your gene pool. GMOs are significantly less mad science-y than what they replace.
I remember there was a GMO Tomato that was made to be as large as possible. But the downside was, that it had almost no nutrients anymore.
I think that Crispr and GMOs are really promissing, but the way it is used is not to create the best food possible, but to create the best-selling food
First off source for GMO tomato? Still havent given one that article had no mention of it 2nd why is it a bad thing if not every use of GMOs involves making food better? uve mentioned one example I can name one in the opposite direction, so what it seems is, theyre used for both and I’m wondering why thats a bad thing? Is painting bad unless painting something with functional use like heat dissipating paint onto something that needs it dissipated or is it okay to paint for both artistic and functional purposes
A. They have no significant difference in nutrition than non-GMO. In fact many GMO’s have been created to improve nutrition but sadly not used because of dumbfucks like Greenpeace who would rather have people go blind or die than accept GMO food. For example, rice that produces vitamin A and folic acid have been created but never used.
B. The “Terminator” GMO gene was created by the USDA-ARS and was NEVER released. No seed on the market has ever had a GMO sterility gene. Contrary to public opinion, it was designed to be integrated with other GMO genes to prevent the outcrossing and spread into the environment, not as an IP control mechanism.
Also don’t forget the elite side of the food industry (gourmet chefs, etc.), that needs to demonize the more cost-effective things in order to make their own alternatives look more appealing.
Speaking of it, one anti-GMO organization actually shown expensive gourmet food as an allternative to the golden rice.
Golden Rice is the most obvious example of how wrong you are on all your points. Golden Rice is GMO to be easier to grow in bad locations and provides a lot more nutrients than non-GMO rice. It is cheap and easy to grow, intended to bring food nutrition to parts of the world that suffer from nutritional deficiency.
This one GMO food solved blindness, diabetes, and death from lack of vitamin A. Many MANY more foods are modified for our benefit that don’t attract people who are scared of the words Genetically Modified. Do you even know how things are genetically modified? Breeding programs that specifically target for traits. No one is going into the DNA to make 5G tracking chips or Super COVID.
what spreading baseless fear? You misunderstood my comment.
I remember a GMO Tomato being modified to be as large as possible, leading to it having almost no nutrients anymore.
That’s what i meant. Not some “DNA to make 5G tracking chips or Super COVID”
I am actually insulted by this comment. I will have to ask you to stop jumping to conclusions and stop thinking that everyone is a conspiracy nutjob.
Anyways, i am in no way against GMO. What i said is that they’re often less healthy than “traditional” alternatives. That has nothing to do with the procedure itself but rather how the procedure is used and what goals it has. Often the Goal is not to make it healthier, but to make it last longer, make it bigger, in short: make it sell more. And anything that doesn’t directly correlate to sales gets pushed back to save money.
Come on. A lot of foods were bred for shipping, not flavor or nutrition. Some used GMO, others used selective breeding. Here’s an article talking about it 20 years ago. The short answer is people want to make money, and most foods aren’t priced based on their nutritional value.
Q. Is today’s food less nutritious than it was in the past because agricultural soil is being depleted of minerals?>
A. Several studies of fruits, vegetables and grains have suggested a decline in nutritional value over time, but the reasons may not be as simple as soil depletion. There is considerable evidence that such problems may be related to changes in cultivated varieties, with some high-yielding plants being less nutritious than historical varieties. Several other issues are involved, like changes in farming methods, including the extensive use of chemical fertilizers, as well as food processing and preparation. A 2004 study evaluated Department of Agriculture data for 43 garden crops from 1950 to 1999. The researchers found statistically reliable declines for six nutrients — protein, calcium, potassium, iron and vitamins B2 and C — but no change for seven others.
The researchers suggested that “any real declines are generally most easily explained by changes in cultivated varieties,” like possible trade-offs between yield and nutrient content.
They also pointed out that modern fruits and vegetables were still nutritionally valuable and suggested the remedy was to eat more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts and beans and less refined sugars, separated fats and oils and white flour and rice, which they said “have all suffered losses much greater and broader than the potential losses suggested here for garden crops.”
Donald R. Davis, the lead author of the 2004 study, wrote a review of evidence of nutrition loss in fruits and vegetables in 2009. He concluded that the broad evidence of nutritional decline seemed difficult to dismiss, though more study was needed, he said, especially of inverse relationships between yield and nutrient concentration.>
Paywalled and says nothing about GMO, let alone a tomato. Nice try, tho.
GMO + Capitalism = Plants modified to be resistant to specific pesticies and herbicides, increasing their use; farmers being sued due to their plants being polinized by GMO plants and so on.
The problem is not GMO, it’s GMO under low or no regulation Capitalism: it’s guaranteed that it’s going to be used in all the wrong ways even if a handful of examples are actually not (and even Golden Rice is patented, which opens the door to abuse if its use becomes widespread).
Most distrust of some powerful new tools of Science is due to how the political and economic environment we live in tends to shape the use of such tools, much more than of the tools themselves.
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