When many people think of watermelon, they likely think of Citrullus lanatus, the cultivated watermelon with sweet, juicy red fruit enjoyed around the world as a dessert.
When many people think of watermelon, they likely think of Citrullus lanatus, the cultivated watermelon with sweet, juicy red fruit enjoyed around the world as a dessert. Indeed, watermelon is one of the world’s most popular fruits, second only to tomato – which many consider a vegetable. But there are six other wild species of watermelon, all of which have pale, hard and bitter fruits.
Researchers have now taken a comprehensive look at the genomes of all seven species, creating a resource that could help plant breeders find wild watermelon genes that provide resistance to pests, diseases, drought and other hardships, and further improve fruit quality. Introducing these genes into cultivated watermelon could yield high-quality sweet watermelons that are able to grow in more diverse climates, which will be especially important as climate change increasingly challenges farmers.
“As humans domesticated watermelon over the past 4,000 years, they selected fruit that were red, sweet and less bitter,” said Zhangjun Fei, a faculty member at Boyce Thompson Institute and co-leader of the international effort.
As described in a paper published in Nature Genetics on November 1, the researchers made these insights using a two-step process. First, they created an improved version of a “reference genome,” which is used by plant scientists and breeders to find new and interesting versions of genes from their specimens.
Read more at Boyce Thompson Institute
Image: The seven species of watermelon have an incredible amount of diversity. (Credit: Xingping Zhang/Syngenta)
