How modern watermelon breeding balances flavour, formats and the rise of seedless varieties.
WHY IT MATTERS
Few fruits carry as much cultural baggage — and consumer expectation — as watermelon. It is the taste of summer, the symbol of holidays, picnics and long, hot days. Slice it open and people expect refreshment, sweetness and crunch, without excuses. Miss that mark once, and the entire category feels the impact.
Globally, watermelon is one of the most widely produced and consumed fruits, with annual production topping 100 million tonnes. Europe, meanwhile, is one of the most quality-driven markets, increasingly shaped by seedless watermelon, mini formats, and the steady rise of fresh-cut.
That’s why watermelon breeding has become so strategic in the seed sector. Breeders are no longer selecting only for yield and sweetness, but for a whole chain of requirements — from field performance and shelf life to transport resilience and convenience — while still delivering the simple promise consumers care about most: a great eating experience, every time.
In this two-part feature, Seed World Europe speaks with leading watermelon breeders to understand how breeding targets have evolved, how seedless systems reshape strategy, and how genetics, technology and long-term investment are redefining what the modern watermelon must be.
Watermelon breeding used to sound almost quaint: make it sweeter, make it redder, make it bigger, make it yield. If you told that story today, though, most breeders would smile politely and then show you the real checklist. The modern watermelon programme is not a single finish line. It is a multi-lane motorway with growers, shippers, retailers, processors and consumers all driving at different speeds, honking about different things, and expecting the breeder to keep traffic flowing.
Seed World Europe spoke with breeders working in different markets and segments, and their answers reveal a clear pattern: breeding targets have expanded from “the fruit” to “the entire value chain”. The fruit still matters, absolutely, but it must now arrive on time, survive stress, withstand logistics, fit new consumption habits, and do all of that while delivering the one thing that can’t be negotiated: the eating experience.
From “Nice Watermelon” to “Complete Product”
Diego Maestre, global crop manager melon & watermelon at BASF | Nunhems, describes breeding priorities as strategic pillars rather than a loose wish list. The work, he explains, is organised around key frontiers: dual-purpose varieties, acceleration toward seedless fruit, resilience against climate-related stresses, and a strong focus on collaboration across partners. In his framing, breeding is not only about a plant and a fruit, but about aligning genetics with real-world needs — from the grower’s field to the retailer’s shelf and the consumer’s kitchen.
That emphasis on the wider chain also comes through clearly in the way Emilio Sarria Villada, breeding manager watermelon, squash and beans at Rijk Zwaan, describes shifting objectives. In the “traditional” era, he notes, breeding focused on fruit quality traits — flesh colour, sugar, yield. More recently, objectives have widened to account for what different parts of the chain require.
For growers, the focus is on adaptation and resistances that reduce reliance on chemicals. For processors and supermarkets, shelf life and flesh texture matter more than ever, especially as convenience formats and ready-to-eat products become more common.
For consumers, the direction points toward new formats that keep the sweet taste and attractive flesh colour but better match how people buy and eat fruit.
Across interviews, this “complete product” idea shows up repeatedly. A modern variety is expected to be productive and uniform, but also visually appealing, transportable, flexible for harvest timing, and consistent across environments. It’s the opposite of a one-trick pony. It must do everything—because the moment any part of that chain fails, blame rarely lands on the weather, the truck schedule, or the retail display. It lands on the variety.
Yield is Still King, But Quality is the Crown
Megan Calvert, seedless watermelon breeder at Bayer, speaks in the language of practicality. If growers don’t make money, nothing else matters. Yield remains a predominant target because higher yield improves competitiveness and keeps production viable. But she quickly expands the lens: fruit quality, she explains, centres on appearance and taste — external colour, flesh colour, brix, firmness — tailored to the needs of different markets.
Then come the “quiet” traits, the ones consumers rarely name but immediately notice when they’re missing. Early maturity can help growers gain first-to-market advantages. The ability to maintain quality in the field provides harvest flexibility — something that matters when labour is tight, weather windows are unpredictable, or supply contracts demand volume at a certain time. Transport and handling tolerance is essential because a perfect fruit in the field can become a disappointment by the time it reaches retail. A variety must still look good when stacked under bright lights and handled by many hands. In the end, Calvert circles back to the consumer: the right size and shape, vivid flesh colour, and sweetness that actually tastes like a reward.
Ashish Patel, head of germplasm development – cucurbits at Syngenta Vegetable Seeds, offers a similar two-sided view: traits important for growers, and traits important for distributors, retailers and consumers. Growers need total yield, marketable percentage, shape, uniformity, stability across environments, and disease resistances. The value chain needs sugar content, flesh colour, firmness, taste and flavour, shelf life, and the ability to travel long distances without losing quality. In other words: genetics has to solve for both the field and the fridge.
Jovan Djordjevic, watermelon breeder at Murray River Seed Co., and director of the UC Davis Plant Breeding Academy, sharpens the point by putting flavour right at the foundation. “If sweetness is not stable, texture is not crisp, and internal colour is not consistent, nothing else matters.’ But flavour alone does not carry a variety to success. Modern watermelon must also deliver reliable field performance: predictable productivity, uniformity, shelf life, ease of transport, and consistency across diverse climates and growing systems. The real challenge isn’t maximising one trait, it’s making sure eating quality survives the entire journey from field to consumer.
What’s striking is that none of these breeders treat “quality” as a single number, like brix. It is a bundle: flavour, sweetness stability, texture, colour, and consistency after shipping. The real aim is not merely to hit a target, but to avoid disappointment. Watermelon is a fruit of expectation. People think they know what they’re buying. A bland slice doesn’t just ruin a meal—it can push a consumer away from the category.
The Seedless Shift: Consumer Preference Meets Breeding Reality
If there is one market fact no breeder disputes, it is that seedless dominates consumer preference. But the interviews also show why seedless is not a simple toggle. Breeding strategy changes because the biology changes — and the timeline changes with it.
Calvert explains that seedless varieties take much longer to reach market when parental lines are developed using traditional methods. The key difference is genetic: the female parent used in seedless systems has four copies of the genome, not two. That difference slows development, and it forces breeders to anticipate market needs further in advance. The result is a planning challenge: by the time a seedless variety is ready, market preferences may have shifted in subtle but important ways — toward a new size, a new rind pattern, a different eating texture, or different retail requirements.
Juan Antonio Fernández, watermelon breeder at Semillas Fitó, describes the procedures for creating seedless watermelons as similar in concept to seeded breeding, but far more technical and complex in execution. Improving triploid varieties requires creating, stabilising, maintaining and multiplying tetraploid parents. It is slow, difficult, expensive, and requires experience. Diploid hybrid production is complex too, he notes, but it does not reach the same level of complexity as triploids.
Maestre describes seedless watermelon breeding as a strategic cornerstone. The ambition, he says, is to accelerate the global shift toward seedless, making watermelon easier and more enjoyable. But this transformation comes with challenges: expanding the genetic base, innovating continuously, and collaborating with partners across the chain. In his view, it’s not enough to breed seedless; the traits must be strong enough — and consistent enough — to move the category forward.
Sarria Villada adds another layer: the main difference lies in developing the mother lines, which is highly complex in seedless varieties. Tetraploid development involves lab work but also selection in the field to avoid harmful effects of the chemicals used for genome duplication. And while seedless is the headline, his team is also working on reducing seed impact in “normal” varieties. Reduced seed size, he argues, can be very valuable; sometimes consumers cannot distinguish a microseed variety from a seedless one. That makes microseeded types an interesting bridge between traditional seeded types and full seedless systems, especially where production realities or price points make seedless adoption more complex.
Djordjevic notes that while seedless dominates consumer preference, triploid breeding remains one of the most challenging systems. Seedless isn’t just a trait, it’s a breeding system. Breeding cycles are long, seed production is complex, and mistakes are expensive. Success depends not only on genetics, but on a long-term strategy and early experience in seed production environments. “Our industry has many examples where some of the best seedless genetics never reach growers because the seed production economics simply don’t work.”
Taken together, these views show seedless as both a market demand and a technical burden. Everyone wants it. Everyone is working on it. But everyone also knows that seedless is not a single trait — it’s a breeding system with knock-on effects throughout the programme, from parent line maintenance to seed production logistics.
Dual-purpose, Fresh-cut, and the Changing Way People Eat Watermelon
Another quiet driver in the interviews is the shift toward new consumption formats. Watermelon is no longer only a whole fruit carried home like a trophy. It’s increasingly a snack, a convenience product, a fresh-cut item, a portion-sized purchase. That changes what breeders must deliver.
Maestre describes breeding efforts that include dual-purpose varieties, offering firmness and eating quality suitable for both the fresh market and the expanding fresh-cut segment.
That implies varieties that hold texture after slicing, maintain appearance, and keep eating quality over time. Those aren’t classic “field traits”; they are traits shaped by consumer behaviour and retail strategy.
Sarria Villada points to the same direction when he talks about enhancing flesh texture and shelf life for “fourth-range” convenience products — fresh-cut and ready-to-eat offerings that require the fruit to behave well after processing.
And then there is format itself. Smaller sizes, mini categories, and consumer-friendly weight ranges are not novelty — they are answers to how households shop today. Breeding for size is not just about “big” or “small”; it’s about uniformity, pack-out, retail display, and eating occasions.
Colours: Innovation, Niche, and the Dominance of Red
If seedless is the macro-trend, colour is a more nuanced one. The watermelon universe now includes scarlet reds and crimson reds alongside orange, canary yellow and salmon yellow. But are breeders truly pursuing these colours — and what does it do to breeding priorities?
Sarria Villada says diversifying flesh and skin colours is one of the key pillars of innovation. He notes that his programme has introduced seedless yellow-flesh varieties and one of the world’s first seedless orange-flesh varieties, recognised with an Innovation Award at Fruit Attraction 2024.
Francisco Xavier Lopez Fernandez, global crop coordinator at Semillas Fito, offers a contrasting framing: yellow and orange remain niche markets. For most of the market, deep red colour that remains stable even after long shipping dominates the agenda, concentrating the vast majority of effort.
He adds that because many breeding programmes focused on red for years, red varieties are far ahead in agronomic and quality features compared with other colours.
This tension — innovation versus volume — is familiar in breeding. Niche traits can be exciting and brand-building, but the bulk of investment often stays where the bulk of demand lives.
Even among breeders who pursue colour diversification, it has to sit alongside the essentials: yield, consistency, transportability and flavour.
The Cultural Role of Watermelon, and Why it Matters to Breeders
Maestre adds an angle that moves beyond pure product specs. In many regions, he notes, watermelon is more than a fruit: it is tradition and celebration, and in some contexts even a source of survival because it stores water. He also points out watermelon’s efficiency: producing one kilogram requires roughly 50 litres of water. That sort of framing is not only marketing; it influences breeding priorities around sustainability, resource use, and the idea of watermelon as a climate-relevant crop.
And this might be one reason the crop is seeing continued growth and reinvention. Even while breeders are pushed to solve technical problems, they also sense opportunity: a fruit that can be convenient, healthy, refreshing, and culturally meaningful—while also being relatively water-efficient—has a strong future, if quality stays consistent.
The Modern Target List, Summarised
Across all answers, watermelon breeding targets now fall into a few major clusters:
- Grower performance: yield, marketable percentage, uniformity, stability across environments, predictable behaviour, and earlier maturity where it provides advantage.
- Fruit quality: sweetness and flavour, flesh colour, texture, firmness, and internal consistency.
- Supply chain traits: long-distance transportability, shelf life, and resilience to handling and retail conditions.
- Consumer convenience: seedless systems, microseed options, and new formats like minis and portion sizes.
- Innovation and differentiation: colour diversification and premium eating experiences—without sacrificing reliability.
Part 2 will follow the “how”: how breeders handle polygenic traits and environment interactions, how disease pressure reshapes programmes, how genetic diversity is expanded, and which molecular and new breeding techniques are becoming central to progress.
