high quality shipping-type water-
melon. 'Smokylee,' 'Dixielee,' and
'Sugarlee' were developed from
this program.
 1962. Because of interest on the
part of Florida growers and shippers
in new varieties and numerous in-
quiries from them about the adapt-
ability of the 'Klondike' and 'Peacock'
cultivars grown commercially in
California, we acquired a number of
accessions of these types in the pe-
riod 1962-64. None of them proved
to be adapted to our conditions, but
crosses made in 1962 to a wilt-re-
sistant Peacock type led to the in-
corporation of an intense red flesh
color and crisper-firmer flesh tex-
ture into many of our breeding lines.
These two characters, along with
small black seeds and higher soluble
solids juice, are some of the most
important improvements that have
been developed in our lines since
that time. They have markedly im-
proved the appearance and eating
quality of the watermelon flesh.
These characters, along with a tough
rind, and resistance to both an-
thracnose and Fusarium wilt are
combined in 'Dixielee,' and all but
the intense red flesh color are in
'Sugarlee.'
 1964. In the early 1960's water-
melon mosaic built up quickly and
caused severe damage in some south
and central Florida watermelon
fields. In our search for resistance to
this disease, we obtained in 1964 all
the accessions of Citrullus species
that were then available from the
U.S. Regional Plant Introduction


Station at Experiment, GA. The
original 568 seed samples were sub-
divided according to seed differ-
ences into 848 total accessions.
These were planted in the field for
several seasons and, under condi-
tions of variable, but sometimes se-
vere, natural infection, three
accessions (P.I. 248178, P.I. 249010,
and P.I. 255137) were selected for
freedom from mosaic infection. A
backcrossing program was initiated
to incorporate this resistance into
'Charleston Gray', 'Jubilee', and
'Crimson Sweet', but the necessity
for relying on natural infection for
screening and the sporadic occur-
rence of mosaic in some seasons re-
sulted in the loss of the clearly


defined resistance demonstrated in
the original PI's. Some lines with
apparent tolerance to mosaic were
distributed to Hawaii, where they
reacted similarly to their perform-
ance here, but no variety releases
have been made. Work in this proj-
ect was discontinued in 1977, but
recently an African accession named
'Egun', reported to have resistance
to watermelon mosaic virus 2, has
been obtained, and crosses were
made in 1981 between some of our
better breeding lines and F2, F,, and
parent lines of this accession.
 1969. Another major facet of our
breeding program was initiated in
1969, when crosses were made be-
tween several of our better large-


Vixielee (1919)


I