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SCHMIDT FAMILY
VINEYARDS
grapes, and pomegranates, indicating that by this time they had been bred to sweetness.
Probably not the sweetness that we are now accustomed to, but definitely sweeter than the
5,000-year-old Egyptian gurma.
It turns out that breeding out the bitterness was particularly easy with the watermelon, and it
also gave rise to its red color. There is only one gene in the fruit responsible for its sweetness,
so it would have been easy to cultivate that trait. It also turns out the gene that determines
sugar content is paired with the gene that creates the color red. The sweetening of the water-
melon was also the reddening of the watermelon. A Byzantine-era mosaic shows the fruit as
yellow-orange, and the first color images of the watermelon from medieval Italy show a pink
bordering on red color to the flesh.
Of course, we know this. Redder is better. It’s why we stand in the store or at a market
thumping and inspecting them, as if we can hear the color red through the rind. We’re either
excited to see deep red flesh, or somewhat disappointed by the pinker varieties. Even so,
there are still varieties today with flesh ranging from white, to orange, to red. Sadly, the blue
fleshed “Moon Melon” is a hoax.
The watermelon is also a world traveler. The movement into the Mediterranean regions was
a no brainer. There is evidence of it in Spain by the 10th century, which is a short distance to
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summer 2018 | www.southernoregonmagazine.com 113
