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Here is what people are saying about the NWA:
  • “The NWA has been invaluable to Multicorr in our marketing efforts. We are newcomers to the watermelon industry (3 years) and have found the Vineline a key marketing tool to easily reach our core audience. The NWA offers a proven and effective platform for entertaining our existing customers and spending quality time with our targeted potential customers. Through the NWA – we continue to grow our produce bin business.”
    John Goodloe,
    Vice President
  • “The NWA Transportation Program is a service designed specifically for our shippers that is managed and operated on behalf of NWA by C. H. Robinson Worldwide. It provides extensive regional capacity capability, competitive rates, 24/7/365 communication and sophisticated logistics cost analysis tools. The program is a bottom line value that assists our members in retaining existing customers and growing new business opportunities.”
    Jim Schmidt
  • “What does the NWA do for its members? This is something that I live by in my business.
    The difference is in ‘We’ and ‘I’.
    ‘I’ is one, and ‘We’ are many with the NWA. We promote and work on all issues affecting the watermelon business together, and We improve our companies and the watermelon business as a whole.”
    Nowell Borders –
    Borders Melons
  • “As an allied member of the National Watermelon Association, International Paper is proud of its support and participation in the association. The NWA provides both outstanding leadership in the produce category and great opportunities for allied members like IP to interface with the membership of the association, many of which are our customers. Whether it is a product safety issue involving packaging, promotion opportunities, or other industry trends, the NWA provides its membership with real time information for the betterment of the industry. Thanks NWA.”
    Jim Mastropietro – International Paper
  • “The most important thing to me in the NWA is networking with the people who attend and support the industry through their unselfish contributions, year after year, whether through mere attendance, service, donations, ideas, or love of the industry. They are the glue that holds this industry and this Association together, and allows a group to do more positive good than we, as individuals, can do separately. The members, with special emphasis given to board members and officers, committee members, and others willing to sacrifice personal interest for overall industry health and growth, are the backbone of the Association and the industry. That allows us to have a more organized, better, healthy, and growing industry. That is why I support NWA.”
    Anita Field –
    Wabash Valley Growers
  • “The NWA helps any person, Grower, Company, or group that needs help with any segment of the watermelon industry.”
    Tommy Smith –
    Labelle, Florida
  • “From promotions to safety issues to simply bringing us together, and acting as the mouthpiece of all the vital pieces of the American watermelon industry, the National Watermelon Association is a vital and dynamic organization. Nunhems USA recognizes this fact -- which is why we expend significant energy and a large portion of our marketing budget year after year ensuring the highest visibility to the breadth of the NWA: how they touch, and greatly benefit, virtually every segment of the watermelon chain.”
    Travis Estvold -
    Nunhems USA
  • “The NWA is the Strength, Heart, and Soul of the Watermelon Industry. Through the voluntary effort of networking together, growers, shippers, and associates continue to keep Watermelon at the forefront of the produce industry insuring infrastructure from Farm to Consumer.”
    Greg Leger –
    Leger & Son
  • “During the 2012 season there was an outbreak of salmonella in cantaloupe in southern Indiana close to where watermelons were being shipped. The information that NWA was able to obtain and quickly got out to its members allowed us to be proactive with our customers and helped us to keep shipping.”
    Chris Bloebaum –
    Delta Fresh Sales
  • “Without the NWA, I wouldn't be known in the NASCAR world as "Melon". This seemingly meaningless nickname has enabled us to capture a much larger audience's attention than the average racer with the average sponsor.
    "Watermelons" and "NASCAR" were not associated with each other in the past. Well, together we are changing that. With help from the NWA, we are putting watermelons on the forefront of NASCAR fans’ minds across the country and Canada.
    When fans see me at a NASCAR race, they don't have to look very far to see watermelons, and of course a watermelon queen. The queen program is another advantage that we utilize to put watermelons on the top of NASCAR fans’ weekly grocery lists.”
    Ross Chastain –
    NASCAR Driver
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Scientific Research

Progress made against watermelon threat
Apr 18, 2007 9:29 AM, By Luis Pons
United States Department of Agriculture

A keen eye, fast action, and a vast plant collection may help nip in the bud a potential widespread threat to watermelons.

Last July, plant pathologist Chandrasekar Kousik of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) U.S. Vegetable Laboratory in Charleston, S.C., was conducting field studies on a watermelon disease when he made a startling discovery: significant infestations of broad mites on watermelon plants.

Kousik knew he had made a troublesome finding, as broad mites had never been reported on watermelon plants in the United States.

Broad mites, Polyphagotarsonemus latus, feed on at least 60 plant families. Cucumbers are highly susceptible to the mite, which on the watermelon plants was seen damaging tender leaves and growing tips. Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) is an important economic commodity grown in 44 states — most prominently in Florida, Georgia, Texas, California, Indiana, South Carolina and North Carolina.

The discovery inspired Kousik, fellow Vegetable Laboratory scientists Amnon Levi and Alvin Simmons, and Clemson University researchers to seek ways to use plants' natural resistance to fight off the mite.

They turned to a collection of wild watermelon — plants from different regions of the world — maintained by the ARS Plant Genetic Resources Conservation Unit in Griffin, Ga.

The researchers studied 219 plant accessions and ultimately chose six they regarded as having the best resistance potential against broad mites. Kousik then led greenhouse studies that confirmed this resistance in the six selected introductions by artificially infesting the candidate plants with broad mites that had been cultured on susceptible watermelon plants.

According to Kousik, these wild watermelon varieties may be useful as sources of natural genetic resistance during the development of commercial watermelon varieties that resist the mites.

Identifying and developing host-plant resistance to broad mites — which are usually controlled by pesticides that can also harm beneficial parasitoids and predators — are practices that fit well into environmentally friendly crop-protection strategies, according to Kousik.

ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.

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