The top-quality watermelon from 100 years ago is not even eaten by pigs now?

Do you still remember that a blogger once posted a photo of the "top-quality watermelon from 100 years ago" that he grew, saying that although this watermelon has a strong aroma, it has a thick skin, small flesh, a rough taste, and average sweetness - even pigs won't eat it.

Many netizens lamented, "It turns out that humans have only had good melons to eat for a few years" and "We finally see the melons in the oil painting."

Still Life Painting 1645-1672 | Giovanni Stanchi. Watermelons, Peaches, Pears, and Other Fruit in a Landscape.

But was it really impossible to eat red and sweet watermelons 100 years ago?

@种子猎贼SeedHunter's Weibo丨Weibo

Shishan watermelon grown by blogger丨Weibo

This watermelon is called Stone Mountain Watermelon. This variety was bred in Georgia, USA in 1923 and quickly became the best-selling watermelon variety in the 1930s and 1940s. Later, due to a large number of hybridization, Stone Mountain Watermelon has almost become extinct, and it is difficult for us to taste it now. However, as early as the 17th century, humans had already bred red-fleshed watermelons . As a top-quality watermelon 100 years ago, Stone Mountain Watermelon should not be so unpalatable that even pigs would not like it.

The transformation of watermelon from a bitter melon to a summer favorite is not just a new achievement in the past 100 years. Humans began to domesticate watermelon thousands of years ago.

01

Four thousand years of watermelon domestication

In ancient times, watermelons were neither red nor sweet, and were even bitter. Watermelons are a plant of the Cucurbitaceae family. The cucurbitacins they produce are cytotoxic, which is an important defense mechanism for plants to survive and reproduce in the wild, and the bitter taste comes from this. Today's medicinal watermelons (Citrullus colocynthis) are still very bitter. People use them to extract cucurbitacins that can be used as medicine, and also use them as biofuels. Its relative, the fodder watermelon (Citrullus amarus), although not bitter, is not red or sweet, and is generally used as feed. The cultivated watermelons (Citrullus lanatus) we currently eat have been bred and no longer bitter.

White and bitter medicinal watermelon丨Ji-Elle

It is difficult to verify when cultivated watermelons lost their bitter taste, but watermelons have been in human life for a long time. In southwestern Libya, researchers have found watermelon seeds that are 5,000 years old. Watermelons have also appeared in Sudan in 1500 BC. In the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in Egypt, archaeological experts have also found watermelon seeds that are around 1330 BC.

5,000-year-old watermelon seeds found in Libya | References [2]

In the process of domesticating watermelon, humans also spread it from Africa to all parts of the world. As early as 2000 AD, people in the Nile Valley began to try to cultivate watermelon; later, watermelon appeared in the Mediterranean region. By the Roman period (31 BC to 476 AD), watermelon cultivation was flourishing in northern Africa and Europe. Later, early European colonists also brought watermelon to the Americas. In 800 AD and 1100 AD, watermelon was introduced to India and China, respectively, and gradually spread throughout Asia.

At that time, people also believed that watermelon had therapeutic effects. Including Aristotle, people not only used watermelon as a diuretic, but also put the cold, wet rind on the heads of children suffering from heat stroke to help them cool down. Harry Paris, a horticulturist at the Israeli Agricultural Research Organization, believes that the reason why watermelon spread rapidly around the world is not only due to international trade, but also because the high water content of watermelon can serve as an important source of fresh water during long voyages.

What did watermelons look like at that time? The earliest picture that can clearly show the details of watermelons is a manuscript of herbal medicine (Melones palestini ul' Saracenici of the Tractatus de herbis), drawn around 1300 and now kept in the British Library in London. In the manuscript, the watermelon is small and round, with narrow dark stripes on the green skin. The leaves of the watermelon are folded adaxially and the tendrils are branched. In the same century, other manuscripts depicting watermelons also show the characteristics of small and round fruits at that time, and the different widths of the stripes correspond to two different planting varieties.

A herbal manuscript from 1300 to 1375. Watermelons are small and round. The watermelons in the upper left and lower right pictures are two different varieties, with different widths of lines on the skin. Reference [3]

In paintings from the same period, we can also see that the watermelon flesh is white with black seeds.

Painting of a watermelon-growing scene, painted between 1385 and 1395 | Melones palesini of the Tacuinum sanitatis, Bibliothe`que Nationale de France, ms. Nouv. Acq. Lat. 1673, fol. 38r

In the enlarged version of the photo above, we can see that watermelons had white flesh. | Melones palesini of the Tacuinum sanitatis, Bibliothe`que Nationale de France, ms. Nouv. Acq. Lat. 1673, fol. 38r.

02

Were watermelons a hundred years ago not as good as they are now?

After that, watermelons were continuously cultivated and improved. We don’t know in which year people began to eat sweet big watermelons, but in the illustrations of the manuscript of Tacunium Sanitatis in 1395, we can see that watermelon farmers began to grow red-fleshed watermelons . Since the gene for red flesh is related to the gene that determines the sugar content of watermelons, when people consciously cultivated sweeter watermelons, the flesh of watermelons gradually turned red.

Red-fleshed watermelons were already seen in paintings as early as 1395. Melones dulces of the Tacuinum sanitatis, O¨sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Cod.Ser. N. 2644, fol. 21r.

In paintings from the 17th to 19th centuries, they looked the same as modern watermelons. People at that time not only ate watermelons, but also used them to make wine, which shows that watermelons were already a fruit with a high sugar content.

Watermelon paintings by Aniello Ascione, 1680-1708. Carnations in a terracotta pot, with grapes, watermelon and other fruit in a landscape.

Still Life with Watermelons and Apples in a Landscape. 1771 Spanish painter Luis Egidio Meléndez. Still Life with Watermelons and Apples in a Landscape.

Still life by German painter Leopold Zinnögger, 1835. Früchtestillleben with Melone und Weintrauben.

Watermelon painting from 1864 by Mihail Ștefănescu. Nature statica cu fructe.

People think that watermelons hundreds of years ago were unpalatable, which was probably influenced by some paintings of the same period. In these paintings, the watermelon flesh was white due to insufficient lycopene, and rough veins could be seen, which obviously did not meet the modern watermelon eaters' standard of judging a "good watermelon".

Still life by Italian painter 1610-1670 | Michele Pace. A watermelon, squash, peaches and plums on a stone.

Why are watermelons from the same era so different? Due to the limitations of the cultivation technology at the time, watermelons grown in different regions may be of varying quality. Watermelons of good quality may not necessarily be stably inherited through breeding technology. Planting conditions, including temperature, light, pollination, etc., will also affect the taste of watermelons. People at that time were more likely to buy thick-skinned, unsweet, and hollow watermelons than they are now. Maybe the painter just happened to buy such a crooked melon - it is tasteless to eat, but it is a pity to throw it away, so it is better to use it as a still life painting material!

The Shishan watermelon grown by the blogger this time has thick skin and small flesh, which may be due to unstable seed quality or planting conditions that do not meet the requirements of the variety. In fact, including Shishan watermelon, people have begun to cultivate several watermelon varieties known for their sweetness and juiciness 100 years ago, such as Sugar Baby, Charleston Gray, and CrimsonSweet in the United States. Mahendra Dia, a researcher at the Department of Horticultural Sciences at North Carolina State University, and others measured the sugar content of these watermelon varieties and found that the average sugar content of Shishan watermelon is about 9.14°Bx, while the sugar content of most other varieties can reach 10-12°Bx, which is similar to the sugar content of watermelons on the market now. The sugar content of most apples is 10-14°Bx, while the sugar content of common pineapples is 8-10°Bx.

Still life paintings with watermelons by Russian painters from 1904 to 1917 | Victor Abashin. Four watermelons.

Sugar Baby, a watermelon variety bred in the United States | JF Velasquez Floro

During the same period, my country was also cultivating some local farm varieties, such as walnut pattern, flower tiger, lama melon, etc.

03

Watermelon breeding using modern technology

Most of the breeding work 100 years ago was based on Mendel's laws of inheritance, which were widely accepted at the time. Breeders at the time had already learned how to select and enhance the traits of watermelons, and cultivated many excellent watermelon varieties.

Among all the varieties of watermelons, the most popular one is the seedless watermelon! In 1938, when Huang Changxian was studying for his doctorate in the United States, he used colchicine and diploid and tetraploid watermelons as parents to breed triploid seedless watermelons for the first time. This is a blessing for watermelon eaters who are too lazy to spit out the seeds.

Seedless watermelon丨Image copyrighted by the gallery. Reprinting and using the image may lead to copyright disputes.

In 1953, Watson and Crick built the double helix model of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), opening the door to molecular genetics, which has become an important cornerstone of modern fruit breeding.

Today, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, watermelon ranks fifth among the world's top ten fruits. As a major melon-eating country, China's watermelon cultivation area and total output have reached the top in the world, leaving the second place Turkey far behind.

The top 10 countries with the highest watermelon production in the world in 2019, China ranks first and far exceeds other countries丨FAOSTAT

Since the 1970s, some foreign high-quality varieties have been introduced into my country. At the same time, watermelon breeding has also been carried out in China, and a watermelon and melon scientific and technological team of nearly 500 people has been gradually established, far exceeding the number of people in other countries. In the past 60 years, Wu Mingzhu, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a famous western melon breeding expert, has traveled to Xinjiang and Hainan to cultivate more than 30 high-quality varieties of watermelons and Hami melons, such as "8424" watermelon and "Queen" Hami melon. When eating melons, we should not forget the people who planted them. The high-quality watermelons and melons that can be seen everywhere are inseparable from the efforts of scientists.

Wu Mingzhu working in the melon field丨Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences

The application of modern biotechnology, such as molecular markers and tissue culture technology, has also promoted the gradual localization and improvement of watermelon and melon varieties in my country. High yield, disease and pest resistance, thin skin and thick flesh, and storage and transportation resistance are the main breeding standards. In recent years, my country has also carried out the selection and breeding of some special new watermelon varieties, such as high vitamin C, high citrulline, and high lycopene.

In addition to the conventional goal of high sweetness, the Zhengzhou Fruit Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has even bred a sweet and sour watermelon variety "SW". Not only that, the flesh of watermelons is no longer limited to the common pure red and pure yellow. The "double-color ice cream" watermelon with red and yellow has been on the market for many years.

"Double-color ice cream" watermelon with red and yellow flesh | References [9]

Today we can eat big, sweet watermelons thanks to the domestication of watermelons by ancient people and modern breeding technology. But no matter what, the old partner of watermelons is still the cool air conditioner. 100 years ago, when home air conditioners were not yet popular, even if people could eat good watermelons, their summers still didn't have the flavor.

References:

[1] Dane, F., & Liu, J. (2007). Diversity and origin of cultivated and citron type watermelon (Citrullus lanatus). Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution, 54(6), 1255–1265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-006-9107-3

[2] Wasylikowa, K., & van der Veen, M. (2004). An archaeobotanical contribution to the history of watermelon, Citrullus lanatus(Thunb.) Matsum. & Nakai (syn. C. vulgaris Schrad.). Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 13(4), 213–217. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-004-0039-6

[3] Paris, HS, Daunay, M.-C., & Janick, J. (2013). Medieval iconography of watermelons in Mediterranean Europe. Annals of Botany, 112(5), 867–879. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mct151

[4] Dia, M. (2016). Stability of fruit quality traits in diverse watermelon cultivars tested in multiple environments. Horticulture Research, 11.

[5] The 5,000-Year Secret History of the Watermelon. (2015, August 21). History. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/150821-watermelon-fruit-history-agriculture

[6] Wang Ming. (2003). Progress in watermelon breeding in my country (Part 1). Northwest Horticulture: Vegetables, 3, 6–8.

[7] Wang Ming. (2003). Progress in watermelon breeding in my country (Part 2). Northwest Horticulture: Vegetables, 5, 6–7.

[8] Cheng Rui, Xu Binghua, Zhang Chaoyang, Xu Wenzhao, Gu Yan, Huang Dayue, Sun Yudong. (2021). Analysis of the characteristics and directions of watermelon breeding in my country in the past 10 years based on literature statistics. Chinese Fruit Trees, 2, 79-82.

[9] Yao Huailian, Cao Xuehui, Zhou Wanfeng, Ding Xiaoqing, Yin Ziyue. (2021). Key points for high-quality cultivation of double-color ice cream watermelon in greenhouses. Chinese Vegetables, 3, 114-116.

[10] China Women’s News. Salute to Professor Wu Mingzhu! The Chinese people’s freedom to eat melons is inseparable from this classmate of Yuan Longping. [EB/OL]. 2021-05-27

[11] SeedHunter. 2021-9-11, 15:56. Weibo.

Source: Guokr

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