Posted on 05/28/2021 9:19:12 AM PDT by Red Badger
Just in time for picnic-table trivia, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences rewrites the origins of domesticated watermelons.
Using DNA from greenhouse-grown plants representing all species and hundreds of varieties of watermelon, scientists discovered that watermelons most likely came from wild crop progenitors in northeast Africa.
The study corrects a 90-year-old mistake that lumped watermelons into the same category as the South African citron melon. Instead, researchers, including a first author now at Washington University in St. Louis, found that a Sudanese form with non-bitter whitish pulp, known as the Kordofan melon (C. lanatus), is the closest relative of domesticated watermelons.
The genetic research is consistent with newly interpreted Egyptian tomb paintings that suggest the watermelon may have been consumed in the Nile Valley as a dessert more than 4,000 years ago.
“Based on DNA, we found that watermelons as we know them today — with sweet, often red pulp that can be eaten raw — were genetically closest to wild forms from west Africa and northeast Africa,” said Susanne S. Renner, honorary professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.
Renner is an evolutionary biologist who recently joined Washington University after 17 years working as a professor at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, where she also served as the director of the Munich Botanical Garden and Munich herbarium.
Her lab has long focused on honey melons and cucumbers, but for the past 10 years she has turned to watermelons and bitter gourds.
The genetic information published in the new study — completed with colleagues from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Ithaca, New York; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London; and the University of Sheffield — could be useful for developing a more disease-resistant watermelon crop, Renner said.
“Today’s watermelon comes from a very small genetic stock and is highly susceptible to diseases and insect pests, including various mildews, other fungi, viruses, and nematodes [worms],” Renner said. “So far, we found variation in three disease resistance genes between the Kordofan melon and the domesticated watermelon. Breeders might use these and other insights from the genome.”
But some of the greatest takeaways from this study, Renner said, are related to the mobility of people and their cultural connections.
“It was the Egyptian tomb paintings that convinced me that the Egyptians were eating cold watermelon pulp,” Renner said. “Otherwise, why place those huge fruits on flat trays next to grapes and other sweet fruits?”
“Melons, cucumbers, and watermelons were domesticated several times” across human history, she said. “But to place these domestications in space and name is much more difficult than I thought 10 to 15 years ago. DNA from ancient seeds is already beginning to help.”
Reference: “A chromosome-level genome of a Kordofan melon illuminates the origin of domesticated watermelons” by Susanne S. Renner, Shan Wu, Oscar A. Pérez-Escobar, Martina V. Silber, Zhangjun Fei and Guillaume Chomicki, 24 May 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2101486118
They did have their own flavor though.
We picked up pecans for three cents a pound. I thought that was easy money.
👍🏻👍🏻
In the first half of the Seventies I worked for a company that had a contract to ship watermelons from SoCal to Oregon, and then distribute them to Safeway stores in Oregon, between Eugene and Salem. Summertime, of course.
Hot and tiring, I agree. One benefit of the job was that we would ‘drop’ the occasional melon and refresh ourselves with the tasty moist heart.
When I was growing up, watermelons were only available in the summer and there were only two varieties, Klondike, which were dark green and Rattlesnake, which had light green and white stripes. The Rattlesnakes, which came out in late August and early September, were preferred.
I love melon, all melon.
I have done that so many times, that to this day I rarely eat watermelon, I like it but I’ve eaten so much of it that I just don’t eat anymore...
I haven’t seen one in years............
I am with you, it about when I was 15-16 years old it dawned on me that there had to be a better way to make money, with your brain instead of your back and I decided I needed to go to college, get an education and do something different, I ended up spending 38 years in computer tech support....started with Burroughs in 1981...
I don’t know if this is true or not, but I heard it on Paul Harvey many years ago:
A farmer that grew watermelons was getting tired of the local college frats stealing his watermelons for their frat parties.
One year he got an idea. He put up a sign by the road beside his field that read:
ATTENTION!!!
One of these watermelons is
POISONED!!!
Proceed at you own risk.
That night went by and no watermelons were stolen.
Then another night.
The next morning a NEW SIGN appeared next to his sign, which read:
ATTENTION!!!
TWO of these watermelons is
POISONED!!!
Proceed at your own risk...........................
That’s racist!
Everyone knows that watermelons come from Rocky Ford, Colorado.
I have heard that when people marry in Rocky Ford, Colorado have to get married in a church.
Why?
Because they cantaloupe there................
We ate our watermelons on a picnic table in the backyard. The slats on the top allowed the juice to drip through to the grass below. Much less of a mess than eating it in the house.
I don’t know if it is a practice elsewhere but in Texas—we always put salt on the melons. :-)
Yes, I put salt on watermelon and BLACK PEPPER ON CANTALOUPE.................It’s a Southern Thang!............
Nice composition. Van Gogh would have loved to use it as a model for his painting.
I know that cantaloupes i come from Cantaloupe Island. St. Herbie told me so.
I also put pepper on cantaloupes. People think I’m nuts until they try it. :-)
Was that some of that white privilege we hear about so much?
“We picked up pecans for three cents a pound. I thought that was easy money.”
I never was able to do that since I was washing dishes at the Catalina Restaurant starting at 12 years old.
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