Family: CUCURBITACEAE Submit

Botanical Name: Citrullus lanatus (Thunb) Jatsun and Nakai

Common Name:
SPANISH: Sandía ENGLISH: Watermelon FRENCH: Pastéque DUTCH: Watermeloen
PORTUGUESE: Melancia GERMAN: Wasser meloen ITALIAN: Anguria

General characteristics:
Annual herbaceous plant, creeping or climbing, with thin stems, covered with hairs, of variable length, can reach 5-6 metres, branched, provided with tendril. The leaves are petiolate, with a split blade, outlining the nerves with rounded edges, light green with a soft touch on the upper side and greyish-green with a rough touch on the underside. The flowers are solitary in the axils of the leaves; at first only male flowers appear and then female flowers are interspersed, always dominated in number by the male ones, in proportions between 4-8 and 1. Optimum pollination is by bees and bumblebees. The fruit is a large berry, 2-15 kg, globose or spherical, more or less dark green or striped in the meridians. There are also yellow varieties. The flesh is red or yellow when ripe. To classify watermelons we make two groups: diploid or seeded watermelons, which include all the traditional varieties, either smooth or striped, which produce perfectly formed seeds, and triploid watermelons, which are characterised by not producing viable seeds, since they stop growing after starting their development, remaining white and tender, so that when eating the fruit, their presence is not noticed. The process to obtain triploid watermelons starts with the application of a product called colchicine on a diploid watermelon line. This gives sugar to tetraploid plants, which being crossed with other diploids, will produce the triploid line. A peculiarity of the cultivation of these varieties is that, as the pollen of their flowers is sterile, it is necessary to grow them together with a pollinator, which must be a diploid variety. This is done by intercalating the plants by 50%.

Indicative data:

• Number of Seeds per Gram: 12-26
• Useful Plants per 10 gr. of Seed: 100-200
• Planting spacing between rows: 100-200 cm
• Sowing spacing between plants: 50-100 cm
• Seeds per Stroke: 1-3
• Planting Depth: 2-3 cm
• Germination Power: 5 years
• Growing Cycle: 3-5 months
• Kilograms per Seed per Hectare: 1.5-2.5, 0.5
• Germination Temperature (minimum, maximum, optimal): 13ºC, 35ºC, 5ºC
• Germination Time: 6-8 days