The display always draws a crowd at the annual Specialty Crops Field Day. Covering the bed of a flatbed truck is a selection of melons. And alongside the truck bed are Dr. Jonathan Schultheis and Bill Jester, discussing the merits of the melons.

Schultheis, professor and North Carolina Cooperative Extension specialist, and Jester, an Extension associate in horticulture, are the melon men of the Specialty Crops Program.

Melons have become an integral part of the program, which is a collaborative effort with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, designed to develop and market alternative crops for North Carolina farmers. The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences provides agronomic expertise — faculty members like Schultheis and Jester determine how best to grow new crops — while an NCDA&CS marketing specialist conducts taste tests and surveys to assess consumer interest, then looks for places to sell the crops.

The program is headquartered at the Cunningham Research Station in Kinston, which is where the field day is held each year. This year’s field day, held in July, attracted more than 200 people.

North Carolina is a good place to grow melons, Schultheis says in explaining the growth of the melon component of the program. The soils are good, the climate favorable and the growing season long enough to produce sweet melons. And North Carolina growers have historically produced cantaloupes and watermelons. So it seemed likely that other kinds of melons might also be viable crops.

Schultheis and Jester begin each growing season by screening from 30 to 50 different melon varieties. They plant a small amount of each variety just to see how they’ll do.

“It’s a way to get an idea of yield, how big the fruit are, when the best time to harvest is,” says Schultheis. He estimates that he and Jester have screened between 100 and 150 different varieties since the Specialty Crops Program was started in 1997.

“The whole philosophy behind this is that if we can identify a good, adapted variety of a certain melon that we can grow here in Eastern North Carolina, we can generate a new industry,” says Jester.

The melons Jester and Schultheis grow vary physiologically as well as in shape, color, taste and texture. Among the types of melons they’ve grown are casaba, charentais, crenshaw, galia, Japanese, juan canary and oriental crisp flesh.

Melons that appear to hold promise are grown again the year after screening, usually in larger numbers. During the second year, Schultheis and Jester begin development studies. They monitor stages of fruit development, beginning at fruit set until harvest, and they take detailed notes based on visual observations throughout fruit development in order to determine optimum harvest time. The marketing specialist then takes the melons to grocery stores to see if there’s buyer interest.

“What we’re tying to do is use a systematic process that cuts some of the risk out of [identifying new crops] for growers and fast-tracks crops to the field,” says Jester.

In year three, area growers are asked to grow small amounts of a promising melon, which helps the melon team evaluate the variety under real-world conditions. Growers often add these experimental melons to shipments of other melons going to grocery stores, which helps the team evaluate buyer acceptance of a new melon.

“If a melon still looks good after the third year, we try to expand the acreage,” says Schultheis.

Thus far, the program’s biggest success has been a grapefruit-size, pearl-colored melon called Sprite. This year 10 growers produced 60 to 70 acres of Sprite. From 60 to 70 tractor-trailer loads of the melons were shipped to grocery stores in North Carolina and as far away as New York and Chicago.

Schultheis estimates Sprite sales were worth as much as $1 million to North Carolina growers. Sprite, he says, has the potential to be a new commodity for North Carolina growers.

In the wings are a melon called Golden Beauty and a seedless yellow watermelon called Buttercup. Both have been well-received by buyers.

What the future holds for Sprite, Golden Beauty and Buttercup is anyone’s guess, although it appears Sprite is well on its way to becoming a part of at least some North Carolina farms. It is likely that again next year during the Specialty Crops Field Day, Schultheis and Jester will spread out an array of melons for growers to consider and taste. And that the melon display will again draw a crowd.

—Dave Caldwell