Latest Prices of Seedless Watermelon Seeds and a Detailed Guide to Growing Them

Seedless watermelon is a triploid watermelon produced by crossing a diploid with a tetraploid created through induced mutation. Because the triploid cells experience disordered synapsis during meiosis, triploid watermelons cannot form seeds, yet seedless watermelons are grown from seeds; it is just that these seeds are not the seeds inside a seedless watermelon. Now let us take a look together at the prices of seedless watermelon seeds and how to grow them!

How much do seedless watermelon seeds cost?

Note: The price of seedless watermelon seeds varies with seed quality, variety, place of origin and market, but it is worth noting that the seedless watermelon itself has no reproductive capacity and no seeds; although its cultivation techniques share some similarities with those for ordinary watermelons, there are also differences.

Where do seedless watermelon seeds come from?

1. Artificial induction: Soak the seeds of diploid ordinary watermelons in a 0.2-0.4% colchicine solution for 12-24 hours, or apply a 0.2-0.4% colchicine solution dropwise to the growing point at the stem tip of the seedlings at 6-7 p.m. each day for four consecutive days.

2. Careful management: Wash the treated seeds or seedlings clean with water, and during treatment and the recovery period the plants should be placed under diffused light, and high temperatures must be strictly avoided; at the same time, before they become established they should be given good growing conditions and careful management.

3. Bagging and pollination: Use a tetraploid watermelon as the female parent and pollinate it with diploid pollen to produce triploid seeds. For small-scale seed production, bag the flowers in the afternoon and hand-pollinate the next morning; for large-scale seed production, separate the areas and plant tetraploid female parent plants and diploid male parent plants in the required proportions.

Seed Treatment for Seedless Watermelon

1. Seed selection and soaking: Select seeds according to the variety's characteristics by seed shape, color, size and plumpness, then sun the seeds for 1-2 days, place the triploid seeds in warm water at 55°C and stir, then let the water cool naturally and soak the seeds for 6-8 hours.

2. Manual shell cracking: Seedless watermelon seeds can be cracked either as dry seeds or soaked seeds, but cracking dry seeds easily damages the seed embryo and makes the soaking time and soaking temperature hard to control, whereas cracking soaked seeds has little effect on the germination rate regardless of soaking time and is easy to control.

3. Seed germination: After soaking and shell cracking, place the seeds under constant temperature conditions of 33-35°C for germination. After 24 hours, more than 90% of those with germination ability will have germinated; pick out those with sprouts 0.5 cm long and they can be sown. After 36 hours, essentially all normal seeds will have germinated.

How to Grow Seedless Watermelon

1. Seedling stage management: Seedless watermelon requires relatively high temperatures from seed germination to cotyledon emergence, kept at 30-35°C during the day and around 25°C at night. When the seedlings push through the soil, remove the plastic film promptly, and after emergence ventilate and lower the temperature to prevent the seedlings from growing leggy and to promote a sturdy hypocotyl.

2. Land preparation and planting: For seedless watermelon planting land, apply 3-5 cubic meters of high-quality farmyard manure, 20-30 kg of urea, 20-30 kg of diammonium phosphate and 20 kg of potassium sulfate per mu, prepare the land finely and make beds, and transplant on a windless sunny day at 500-700 plants per mu, watering as you plant.

3. Fertilizer and water management: During the seedling stage of seedless watermelon, apply 5 kg of urea per mu as a top dressing; during the flowering and fruit-setting stage, do not water or fertilize; when the watermelons are the size of duck eggs, apply 15-20 kg of urea and 15 kg of potassium sulfate per mu as a top dressing; in the late growth stage, spray 0.2% monopotassium phosphate on the leaves.

4. Hand pollination: Seedless watermelon uses manual supplementary pollination. At around 8 a.m., use the male flowers of a pollinator variety that opened that day to pollinate the female flowers. After flowering, the earlier the pollination the better, no later than 10 o'clock; pollination should be even and the movements gentle to avoid injuring the stigma.

5. Reasonable ripening: When the seedless watermelon fruit has reached full size but is not yet ripe, apply 200 mg of ethephon solution per kilogram of watermelon by smearing it once along the surface of the melon toward evening; two days later it can be harvested and sold, allowing it to be supplied to the market 3-5 days earlier than naturally ripened melons.