Watermelon Crop Information

Flowering and Pollination

• by Todd C. Wehner
• Department of Horticultural Science
• North Carolina State University
• Raleigh, NC 27695-7609

Watermelon is a cross-pollinated species with monoecious or andromonoecious flowering habit. There is a popular myth that watermelon should not be grown close to other cucurbits such as cucumber, cantaloupe, or squash because of an adverse effect on horticultural traits such as flavor. However, watermelon will not cross with any other cucurbits except for species within the genus Citrullus. Furthermore, there is no effect of foreign pollen on fruit development (xenia) in watermelon.

Greenhouse. Controlled pollinations can be made easily in a greenhouse or screenhouse since there is no need to cover individual flowers the previous afternoon to protect them from pollinating insects such as bees. The greenhouse or screenhouse should be well sealed to prevent insects from getting in. In those structures, pollinations should be made in the morning, and plant maintenance work should be left for the afternoon. Computer controlled heating and cooling, and automated irrigation and fertilization make it possible to operate the greenhouse with fewer labor inputs.

Greenhouse plants can be grown in ground beds, plastic bags or pots containing the growth medium, or in various liquid media such as ebb and flow benches or nutrient film technique. If pots or bags are used, different container sizes should be evaluated to obtain the proper plant size. A minimum pot size for proper growth of watermelon plants in our greenhouses in North Carolina is 8-inch diameter. Plants grown in 10 or 12-inch diameter pots will have longer vines that are more difficult to train and prune, larger fruit, and more seeds per pollination.

In the greenhouse, plants are usually trained vertically onto supports such as strings held by overhead wires. This saves floor space and makes better use of available light. The overhead wire should be 6.5 feet above the walkway to permit most workers to reach the trellis without standing on a ladder, while being able to walk under it without ducking. Plants should be pruned to one main stem, usually with no branches. Because of their weight, fruit must be supported in a sling. Stem length of most watermelons usually requires that plants be trained up the string to the trellis wire, and back down again. Plants should be given sufficient floor space in the greenhouse to grow and flower. For elite varieties and breeding lines, each plant should have 2 square feet or more. It may be necessary to give wild accessions more space, perhaps 4 square feet per plant or more.

More information on watermelon fruit support.

In some latitudes, it may be necessary to provide supplemental lighting for plant growth. We find it difficult to grow plants in Raleigh, North Carolina in the winter without extra lighting. However, plants grow well and produce flowers, fruit, and seeds properly when grown in the spring (February through June) and fall (July through November) seasons.

Field. Natural pollination of watermelons in the field is usually by honeybees that visit the flower to collect pollen and nectar. Bumblebees also are effective pollinators. Hand pollination of watermelon flowers is usually less effective than bee pollination. It is necessary to protect flowers from bee visits before and after making controlled pollinations. Flowers open shortly after sunrise and remain open for 1 day. Usually a pistillate flower and the staminate flower below it (proximal to it) open on the same day, making self pollination possible. Many breeders have found that hand pollination is more effective between 6 and 9 am than later in the day.

The two main methods for protecting controlled pollinations from insect pollination in the field are to begin pollinating before bees become active in the morning, or to cover the flowers the previous afternoon. For the first method, pollinations can be made on newly-opened flowers (Fig. 3.5), which are then covered to keep bees away. This method requires less time per pollination, but care must be taken to stop pollinating when bees are observed in the field. Staminate and pistillate flowers can be covered with gelatin capsules (size OO), cotton wool, plastics caps, or paper rolled into a cylinder (often, holding a pencil inside as the paper is rolled) and closed at one end by folding. It is also possible to use inverted styrofoam or plastic cups (6-12 oz. size) held over the flower (and onto the soil surface) with a J-shaped wire (about 10 gauge thickness) stuck through the cup, or by a wooden stake glued to the cup. Breeders have also made flower covers using mesh or cloth bags (Fig. 3.6), which in some cases are supported by a wire frame that can be stuck into the ground over the flowers to be protected.

The second method requires that flowers predicted to open the next morning be capped the previous afternoon. These flowers will be one or two nodes above the flowers (toward the shoot apex) that are newly opened, and should have some yellow color in the petals. Flowers more than three nodes above the newly opened ones that are completely green will probably not open the next day. Capping of flowers is most useful if done on sunny days, since the pollen does not shed freely after rainy or cloudy days. The following morning, the caps are removed, flowers pollinated, and the caps replaced to keep bees away. This method permits the pollination crew to keep working longer as bees begin to work the field.

In a large field pollination nursery, workers often prefer to mark the flowers that have been capped in the afternoon with a flag (for example, white), which is then exchanged with a flag of a different color (for example, blue) after the pollination has been made. Thus, it is easy to go to the white flags in the morning to make the pollinations, and to go to the blue flags in the afternoon to check whether the pollinations from previous mornings are developing properly. The setting of one fruit inhibits other fruit on the same plant from setting, so it is useful to remove pistillate flowers that have not been used for controlled pollinations as the pollinating crew moves through the field in the afternoon.

Andromonoecious plants have perfect flowers as well as staminate ones. Unfortunately, perfect flowers will not set fruit without being hand pollinated, or visited by a pollinating insect, so they are no more likely to be self-pollinated than pistillate flowers. After pollinating a pistillate flower, a tag is placed on the peduncle or on the stem just below the peduncle (Fig. 3.7). Placing the tag on the stem causes less damage to the pollinated flower and developing fruit. The tag usually has the plot number of the female and male parents and the date the pollination was made. It can also have the initials of the person making the pollination, and the name of the study involved.

Controlled pollinations are made by removing a recently opened staminate flower from the plant to be used as the male parent. The petals of the staminate flower are bent back until they break. The flower can then be used like a paintbrush to pollinate a recently-opened pistillate flower on the plant to be used as the female parent.

A nursery for field pollination should be designed to make it easy to make controlled pollinations, and care for the plants. Direct seeding or transplants can be used. For direct seeding, the seeds should be treated with a registered fungicide before planting. Use of herbicides will significantly reduce the need for hand weeding. For transplants, plastic mulch and drip irrigation will help with weed control. Drip irrigation, or other low-level system (furrow, sub-irrigation) is superior to overhead irrigation to keep the plants dry, so hand pollinations can be made without having to wait for the watering to be completed, and to avoid having pollination caps washed off the flowers.

Pollinations are made easier by planting the lines to be crossed together in one area. Lines to be self-pollinated can be planted together in a second area. It is useful to plant each pair of lines to be crossed in adjacent rows or tiers.

If it is difficult to make self-pollinations in the field on a particular set of lines (perhaps selections from a trial), one or more cuttings can be taken from each of the plants to be selected. The cuttings can be rooted in moist sand in a greenhouse by burying the bottom (proximal) internode, with two to five nodes of leaves above. The resulting plants can be transplanted from the rooting bench to the greenhouse for trellising and self- or cross-pollination of the selections to produce seeds for the next generation.