A lemon melon hybrid fruit has been created in Japan - Food Files

Jul 29, 2023

The new luxury fruit combines the sweet, fragrant, juiciness of melons with the refreshing tang of lemons.

As a wise wit once said, “When life gives you lemons, keep them. Because hey, free lemons.” One Japanese company has taken this philosophy and run with it, spawning a whole new life maxim: “When life gives you lemons, crossbreed them with a melon and create an entirely new fruit.” Slightly less catchy, perhaps, but a genius idea all the same.

Suntory Flowers – the horticultural arm of the Suntory brewing and distilling group – has created the lemon melon, a brand-new fruit that’s garnering worldwide attention. It took five years for horticulturalists to perfect it, propagating imported melons with lemons and fiddling about with cultivation methods and harvest times, but the fruits of their labour are now available to the public.

Combining the sweetness of a melon with the sour and zingy characteristics of a lemon, the rather unimaginatively named lemon melon is round like a melon and yellow like a lemon, with juicy white flesh that starts out crisp like a pear, but becomes softer as it ripens.

Sounds perfect for summer, right? Sadly, searching for them at Woolies will be a fruitless endeavour. There’ll only be 3,800 lemon melons available for sale in Japan throughout the season, which wraps up at the end of August. They also cost a pretty penny – there are reports of lemon melons selling for more than 3,200 yen ($34 AUD) each.

While shelling out $30+ for a single piece of fruit might sound a tad, well, fruity, this is nothing compared to the price tags on some of Japan’s other famous ‘luxury fruits’. The Zentsuji square watermelon can sell for 10,000 yen ($107 AUD) a pop, while a bunch of Ruby Roman grapes could cost you up to 1.2 million yen ($12,800 AUD) for a bunch.

Meanwhile, the Yubari King melon, possibly Japan’s most expensive fruit, can command the most eye-watering of prices. A pair of these prized cantaloupes recently sold at auction for 5 million yen, or $53,600 AUD. It’s enough to put the fear of gourd into you.