You won‘t find many seedless watermelon hybrids. There is red flesh shonima and yellow fleshed swarna from India.
A minimum of 800-1000 g seed is required for cultivating one hectare. Plant hybrids during the month of October- November in Korala so as to be harvested in February without pest and disease attack. Delaying sowing leads to more of virus and pest attack. Watermelon seeds can be sown either in the open or poly house condition, both by traditional means as well as open precision farming.
Open precision farming
In this, seeds are planted at 1 metre intervals with bed width of 1.5 m. The polynizer requirement is most important for seedless watermelon. This is whereby you need plant six rows of seedless watermelon hybrid alternated with one row of sugar baby to act as the polynizer.
Sowing period
After 35-40 days of sowing, the plant will produce both male and female flowers. Male flowers of the swarna/ shonima will not contain any pollen grains hence will need pollinate the female flowers.
When grown under house condition, pollination is done early in the morning through manually assisted pollination by collecting freshly opened main flowers from the sugar baby and depositing pollen grains on freshly opened female flowers.
Harvesting and yield
Fruits get ready for harvest within 45-50 days. On average you can get 3-4 fruits per plant. The average fruit weight is 2.5-3 kg. Watermelon hybrids especially shonima and swarna are very marketable especially in India.
