"Peeable" watermelon is expected to be listed next year

Eat watermelon like peeling apples, have you thought about it?

This is not an illusion. Like the size of an apple, the “small watermelon” seeds with thin paper and crisp sweets have been cultivated and are expected to be available in the middle of next year. The secret of its release will benefit from the deciphering of the watermelon genome map.

On November 26th, 16 domestic and foreign units such as the Vegetable Center of the Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences published an online paper in the top academic journal "Nature and Genetics," announcing that the world's first watermelon genome sequence map has been mapped and deciphered.

“This research result is like opening the 'black box' of watermelon life activities.” Xu Yong, director of the research project and director of the Vegetable Research Center of the Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, said that the project was launched in 2008 and involved more than 60 scientific researchers from home and abroad.

According to reports, the evolutionary analysis of the genome sequence map shows that the origin of watermelon is in Africa. The earliest watermelon was small in size and resistant to disease, but it had poor taste and no sweetness. After years of change, numerous natural selections and artificial breeding, today's watermelon tastes better and its sugar content is higher, but a large number of disease-resistant genes are lost during evolution and artificial domestication.

Xu Yong said that in the future, in theory, it will be possible to cultivate watermelons that can be described as “poisonous and non-invasive” through gene aggregation.

It is understood that in the past, it would take at least five to six years to cultivate a high-quality watermelon variety. Xu Yong said that with the gene sequence maps, it will take at least two or three years to breed new varieties through gene aggregation. "Gene aggregation means that watermelons that meet our needs are selected more efficiently and precisely. This is totally different from transgenes."

At present, the Vegetable Center of the Beijing Academy of Agricultural Sciences has started the cultivation of high-resistance watermelon. In addition, some of the prototypes of seedless “Apple Watermelon” seeds developed using watermelon genome technology have been successful, and some products are expected to be available in the middle of next year.