Grafting is now a necessary method for overcoming disease problems all over the world. However, strong and vigorous squash rootstock often has a bad influence on the quality of watermelon fruit. For instance, grafted watermelon plants sometimes have abnormal fruit shape, hollow inside fruit, low sugar content, and excessive fiber in the flesh.

Our newly developed hybrid squash rootstock, Nautilus F1, is not as vigorous as Shintosa, but the quality of the watermelon fruit is the same as when using bottle gourd rootstock. If you are not satisfied with Shintosa, we recommend hybrid rootstock Nautilus F1 for watermelon grafting.

Nautilus F1 can be suitable for dry and sandy soil conditions. The plants stay healthy until harvest time. It is tolerant to Fusarium wilt and resistant to Bacterial wilt.

NOTE: we recommend to our customers that they conduct a small trial on grafting before they sell Nautilus F1 as a commercial variety. We are not in a position to guarantee either the disease resistance or the suitability of our rootstocks.