King of Summer!Do you know about some cold knowledge about watermelon?

"The old trees are faint, there are fish and shrimp dinner, and the air -conditioned wifi watermelon." The happiness of summer is given by watermelon -a piece of ice watermelon is enough to soothe the fatigue of the day.

Hurry up, is the scene in your dream? @

Watermelon can be called the "King of Summer", refreshing thirst, sweet and juicy, and watermelon contains a large amount of glucose, apple acid, and rich vitamin C, and does not contain fat and cholesterol. Recently, I saw a news saying that it was a large watermelon weighing 90 pounds in Shandong Gong farmers! 90 pounds, this head is not small, all of them have caught up with the author's weight. Why can he plant such a large watermelon? Is this accidental or copied? With the development of technology, can humans grow the fruits of customized size? Alas, you might as well move a small stool and eat this "melon" with me!

Image source: veer gallery

Why do watermelons be for melon?

First of all, the diversity of fruit types and forms is the result of natural selection or artificial domestication. The reason why we have a variety of fruits in a variety of fruits is that the plants are by -products brought about by the plants.

In the process of evolution, for the sake of seeds that can be spread better, there are many tricks of plants: for example, with the help of wind transmission like dandelion, adherence to animals (fur) like Canglee for transmission, coconut, water lily, etc. , Like Fengxianhua, pods, etc., rely on their own ejection force, and one is that a layer of delicious and juicy flesh grows on the seeds of the seeds like watermelon, so that after animals or people eat the flesh, the seeds (that is, watermelon Zi) As a "waste", he has reproduced the plants and expands the territory for plants. Just like to survive and reproduce, the plants have made various small tricks, and watermelon chose to wrap the seeds with delicious melon.

Fruit diversity (He Chaoying et al.: Fruit origin and diversified evolution and development mechanism)

After encountering a mouthful of humans, watermelon rolled up!

After encountering humans, the agricultural traits of the fruit size, taste, and sweetness began to be "directed cultivation", and plant breeding scholars also thought of various ways to improve watermelon.

The traditional breeding method is to choose a parent with excellent traits in many pro -books, hybridize, and then plant it to the ground. Choose a child with the excellent traits of both parties. Reverse, less seeds, good appearance, and storage and transportation. However, this method is somewhat a bit of luck, because it is more effective for the quality and characteristics of a small amount of gene control, but it is difficult to integrate a variety of multi -gene control such as high -quality, high yield, resistance, and other multi -gene control.

The domestication of two kinds of gourd plants (Xu Yongyang, etc., Nature Genetics)

By 1953, Watson and Crek set up a dual spiral model of deoxyrum ribosacuucleic acid (DNA), opening the door to molecular genetics, which has also become an important cornerstone of modern fruits breeding and opened the era of molecular breeding. All creatures on the planet, long shape, structure, function, size, have a set of gene encoding to control. It is the result of its adaptation to the environment in the process of long -term evolution. Of course, watermelon is no exception.

Molecular breeding is to integrate several or even a dozen genes associated with specific traits through the means of molecular marking, genetically modified, and molecular design. , High resistance, cracks, etc., also include the size of watermelon.

Some watermelon varieties (China Agricultural Network)

If you want watermelon to grow well, water and light cannot be less

Of course, in addition to genetic genes that affect the size of watermelon, there is also a very important factor: environmental conditions, including timely appropriate light, moisture, nutrient conditions, etc. If genetic genes determine the upper limit of the watermelon head, then its growth environment and nutritional conditions can determine to how much it can approach or even break through this upper limit, which is similar to people's height: Mom and dad are tall, most of the children are also, and most children are also. The president is very high, but when the parents are not tall, children with good nutrition and sports foot can also break through the height of their parents and grow taller.

Under normal circumstances, the common watermelon in the market is one or two pounds, and one or twenty pounds. It can be seen that the melon farmers in the news really took the environmental conditions of the watermelon, and used ordinary melon varieties to cultivate super melon, and it was delicious.

At present, the largest watermelon in the Guinness World Record is 316 catties of Naxi. Although it is relatively large, it is empty and rough. It is not a common water red, the flesh is white, the taste is not good, and the taste is not as delicious as the ordinary watermelon. Rich and accelerate the growth of fruit swelling, but the potassium is relatively lacking, which is not conducive to the accumulation of sugar. The smallest watermelon in the world is called "Pepquinos", also known as "Thumb Watermelon". It is only 3 cm long and 2 cm diameter. It is a wild plant in South America. In 1987, a Dutch company began It is planted in the United States and Asia, but in fact, this product is just a distant relative of watermelon (watermelon is a gourd family watermelon, and the thumb watermelon is a gourd family horse pupa).

The most adorable head difference (Sina News, Red Net)

Now, we are in the infancy when we are in the construction of watermelon map construction, importance and genetic markers and genes, the mining and separation of genes, and the genetic transformation of important genes.The continuous growth of genetic knowledge, in the future, people will be able to improve crops and achieve "advanced customization" faster and accurately.When that day, dreams like watermelon boats and watermelon hot air balloons may really be realized!Produced: Popular Science China

Author: Yin Chunmei (Institute of subtropical Agricultural Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Producer: China Science Popularization Expo

The China Science Popularization Expo is the Science Popular Science Platform of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is sponsored by the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Relying on the high -end scientific resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it is committed to spreading cutting -edge scientific knowledge and providing fun science and education services.

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