A couple of decades ago, "people didn't trust watermelons; many turned out to taste bad and melons dominated everywhere," recalls Juan López, manager of Pozosur, which is the largest watermelon producer in Spain. He was a direct witness, and one of the protagonists, of the search for a solution to that situation, which led them "through many roads." In 2017, they eventually beat their great competitor in the Region of Murcia: melons. That year, the watermelon production exceeded the 200,000 tons, thereby doubling the volume obtained ten years ago, and achieving a four-fold increase compared to two decades ago and a twenty-fold increase compared to three decades earlier. The arrival of the Fashion variety has been the main reason for that growth.
"We tried everything to obtain a good product that would stop the decline in sales," says Lopez. "We tried grafting with pumpkin, but without completely disconnecting the watermelon plant, in order to maintain a flow of sap from the pumpkin plant." In this way, he says, "we got a good taste, but the plant died. It was like injecting a Land Rover to a cheap car, and ending up with both cars burned."
Since the grafts didn't work, tests were carried out with new varieties. One of the problems was that the black watermelon that was used as a pollinator of the new ones had no outlet in the market. "It was bad, with an unpleasant taste." Sometime later, a few years ago, "we got it right by using watermelons with edible microseeds for the pollination, and now you won't find any black watermelons with seeds anymore. That traditional watermelon has disappeared from the market."
But the greatest success, according to the manager of Pozosur, came with the Fashion variety, which "together with other seedless watermelons, like the Bouquet, introduced in the early nineties, caused sales to skyrocket."
López says that the varieties being tested ended up given away to friends and relatives, "and I remember that everyone told us that they loved the Fashion, so we tried to buy all the seeds from Nunhems, the firm that managed them. This has caused a profound change in the sector, as there are practically no bad watermelons anymore.
Source: laverdad.es
