This Exists: Chinese Farmers Battling ‘Exploding Watermelons’

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by Mark Joyella | 2:05 pm, May 17th, 2011

» 7 comments

Be careful if you pick up a Chinese-grown watermelon this summer. The BBC reports farmers in eastern China have a bizarre problem: their watermelons keep exploding. “Farmer Liu Mingsuo told the Xinhua news agency that more than two-thirds of his crop had blown up,” explains the BBC.

Watermelons (at least those that have not been filled with explosives by local fire departments in an effort to dramatize the dangers of fireworks) do not tend to explode. But in China, state-run media’s reporting acres and acres of melon meeting their fate in sudden detonations. “Growth chemicals” have become prime suspects in the strange situation, except for the fact that melons untreated by chemicals are also, basically, blowing up:

The overuse of a chemical that helps fruit grow faster was blamed in one report by China Central Television.

But agriculture experts were unable to explain why chemical-free melons were exploding. They cited the weather and abnormal size of the melon as factors.

China Central Television said farmers were overspraying their crops with the growth promoter, hoping they could get their fruit to market ahead of the peak season and increase their profits.

According to the Xinhua news agency, 20 farmers in a village in Jiangsu province planted imported seeds from Japan, with 10 households saying their watermelons began exploding last month.

Watch the story here, from the BBC:

(h/t The Blaze)

China, Farming, watermelon

Barack Must Go

Sometimes if there is a lot of rainfall some fruits such as melons have a much higher water/sugar content. This can cause craters or pockets to form in the fruit from growing too big too fast.

Those pockets can build up a kind of gaseous mix that becomes super heated in the hot sun, under optimum conditions ( or not if your the farmer ) this gas can and does sometimes quickly expand, splitting the melon apart as if it had exploded.
ModerateMan

Barack Must Go said:
Sometimes if there is a lot of rainfall some fruits such as melons have a much higher water/sugar content. This can cause craters or pockets to form in the fruit from growing too big too fast. Those pockets can build up a kind of gaseous mix that becomes super heated in the hot sun, under optimum conditions ( or not if your the farmer ) this gas can and does sometimes quickly expand, splitting the melon apart as if it had exploded.

So unusual amounts of rainfall coupled with excessive heat from the hot sun caused this. Global Warming strikes again!
Barack Must Go

ModerateMan said:
So unusual amounts of rainfall coupled with excessive heat from the hot sun caused this. Global Warming strikes again!

Global Warming …. that’s just the atheist code words for God ?
Davo

Barack Must Go said:
this gas can and does sometimes quickly expand, splitting the melon apart as if it had exploded.

Melons? I thought that was a picture of Democrats’ heads exploding from worrying about how to sell 10% unemployment, $6 per gallon gas, and $10 per gallon milk as “good” things America needs more of from the Hussein regime.
Thelonious Funk

I eat Chinese watermelons to get my daily allowance of lead- and now I have to find out how dangerous they are?
Skippy

Those look more like the morons supporting the Donald for President 2012.

These here:

Dem4Ever, The Lantern of Truth, juan, Arkansas Steve, murf, Jaurez
WCinWI, Barack Must Go, NOBAMA, Colorado_Conservative, gordonbloyershow
TeaPartyPatriot, notsofast, Severian, Dronetek, TfT, mitchflorida, skoorbekim
mdanielson, Harry Flashman, OxyCon and NORBIT
Ronald McReagan

Are we sure this isn’t really the work of the Chinese Gallagher?