Watermelon remains a popular summer fruit, and consumers today have many varieties to choose from. For decades, the ‘Crimson Sweet’ variety has stood out as a favorite, earning a reputation for its reliable performance and quality flavor. This popularity means that many people, accustomed to the rise of modern seedless varieties, often wonder about the specific characteristics of this classic melon.
Is Crimson Sweet a Seeded or Seedless Variety?
The ‘Crimson Sweet’ is a classic, standard, seeded variety of watermelon. This means it is a diploid plant, possessing two sets of chromosomes, which allows it to reproduce sexually and produce mature, viable seeds. The melon contains small, dark, hard seeds, confirming its status as an open-pollinated type. The presence of these functional seeds allows home gardeners to save and replant them each year, maintaining the line without purchasing new stock. Since its introduction in 1963, its straightforward genetics have made it a reliable choice for cultivation.
Defining the Characteristics of Crimson Sweet
‘Crimson Sweet’ is renowned for its specific desirable traits that contributed to its widespread adoption. The flesh is a brilliant, deep red color with a crisp, fine-grained texture, and it is known for having a high sugar content, delivering an exceptionally sweet flavor. The fruits are large, typically having a round or slightly oval shape, and they commonly weigh between 20 and 25 pounds at maturity. Externally, the melon is easily recognized by its medium-thick rind, characterized by a light green base color overlaid with distinct dark green stripes. Furthermore, this variety possesses natural resistance to common diseases such as Fusarium wilt and anthracnose.
The Biology Behind Seedless Watermelons
Standard seeded melons, like ‘Crimson Sweet,’ are diploid, meaning their cells contain two sets of chromosomes. In contrast, seedless watermelons are triploid, containing three sets of chromosomes, which causes them to be sterile. This sterility is the reason they are unable to produce fully developed, hard seeds; the uneven number of chromosomes prevents the normal cell division process required for seed formation.
Triploid seeds are not created naturally but are the result of a specific horticultural cross between a diploid plant and a tetraploid plant. The tetraploid parent, which has four sets of chromosomes, is often created by treating a diploid seedling with the chemical colchicine to induce chromosome doubling. Pollinating the flowers of the tetraploid plant with pollen from a standard diploid plant yields the triploid seeds, which then grow into the sterile, seedless fruit.