When Paige Huntington of the East Texas town of Jefferson and a graduate student at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Tyler, was crowned National Watermelon Queen at the National Watermelon Convention in February 2020 after a year as Texas Watermelon Queen, it was with the expectation that she would, like her predecessors, spend the year making personal appearances across the country promoting watermelons.

The mission of the National Watermelon Association, the oldest fruit commodity association in the United States, remains largely unchanged from what it was pre-COVID-19, but with restrictions on travel, in-person conversations and meetings with policy makers, the means by which that mission is pursued has changed.

“Last March, everything changed,” said Bob Morrissey, executive director of the Lakeland, FL-based National Watermelon Association.

Eagle Eye Produce offers the best of both worlds: the benefits of a large company with a national logistics network paired with the customer experience of a small, multi-generational company with deep roots, according to the company’s director of melon sales, Joey Anticevich. “Our team of produce veterans has decades of experience in the melon industry, and we believe we offer the best service in the industry,” he said. “We can pack any size melon in any pack our customers are needing.”

The Wada Farms Marketing Group LLC watermelon program has grown larger each year. “With our sweet potato program in the Carolinas, a lot of our growers that we work with over there grow several other commodities,” said Joe Esta, vice president of the  Idaho Falls, ID-based company. “We had a few of them ask us if we’d be interested in selling some of the items they were currently growing in a small fashion and wanting to expand.”

The National Watermelon Promotion Board named winners in its annual Retail Merchandising Contest, which garnered 220 entries from various retail chains, independent retailers and commissaries throughout the U.S. and Canada. This year’s iteration of the contest — the 12th since its inception —  was reimagined to incorporate social media and marketing efforts in addition to in-store displays.