Summer Fruits

[Anchor Lead]

Thanks to a rather balmy winter last year, summer fruits such as watermelons are showing up in markets about a month earlier than usual. Lower heating bills for the greenhouses and a bumper crop have made these fruits more affordable than last year.

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Large watermelons lie among the vines in this greenhouse. Although it's still early April, the melons clearly sport dark stripes but on the inside, they are mouth-wateringly red. Their relative sweetness is higher than the 12 or 13 Brix of the watermelons harvested in summer.

[Soundbite] Park Bun-yeon(Watermelon Farmer in Haman) : "Last year's harvest wasn't good due to the cold-weather damage, but this year I think we'll harvest twice the amount of last year."

Greenhouse watermelons are usually shipped out in mid-April, but this year's shipment has started to increase since late March. The situation is the same for another summertime fruit, the Oriental melon. Farmers usually have to wait until April for the melons to ripen to a golden yellow, but Oriental melons have already been out on the market since last month. Fruit distributors are seeing a spike in their sales from these premature summer fruits. With strawberries all but gone, there are few fruits available in markets around this time of year. However, the early arrival of watermelons and Oriental melons have brought a 20% increase in volume to fruit wholesalers. Subsequently, the prices of watermelons and Oriental melons have fallen about 15% and 10%, respectively, compared to the same time last year.

[Soundbite] Lee Hye-sun(Busan Resident) : "I've tried Oriental melons and watermelons out early. They're very sweet."

Warm weather and advances in farming technology have now turned popular summertime treats like watermelons and Oriental melons into springtime pleasures.