Completed quality control of early striped.
Have you already had time to feast on the summer berry itself? We are. And the specialists of Roskachestvo not so much ate as they bought striped ones for checking. Experts checked how safe watermelons are for health: whether they are pumped with nitrates and pesticides, whether watermelons bought from the road can be eaten, whether they contain toxins and heavy metals, spores of fungi and other melon diseases.
Berries were bought everywhere: in markets, along roads, and in supermarkets. They all passed the nitrate test brilliantly.
“If the technology is observed, the watermelon takes as much nitrate from fertilizers as it needs to grow. By the end of ripening, there will be no nitrates left in it – the watermelon will grow, feeding on them “, – Senior Researcher of the All-Russian Research Institute of Irrigated Vegetable and Melon Growing Artem Sokolov.
By the way, there are practically no cases when people were brought to hospitals with nitrate poisoning. But just in case, experts advise not to eat watermelon to the very crust – nitrates are concentrated in its white part.
Experts did not find any pesticides in watermelons either. The only exception was one watermelon, bought from a tray on a vegetable base. Experts remind that the main part of pesticides is concentrated in the berry rind, like nitrates. A large part of them settles on top, so the watermelon must be washed very thoroughly before cutting.
As for ripeness, the sweetest and most ripe fruits were sold on decks and from cars. Berries from supermarkets turned out to be the most unripe. This is because watermelons are harvested slightly unripe so that they do not spoil on the road. But all the same, the early watermelons turned out to be not as sweet and tasty as the August fruits will be.
“The consumer should be prepared for the fact that the taste of early watermelons is not as sweet and rich as in later varieties: at the beginning of summer the berries may be unripe and, accordingly, not as sweet as in late August and early September”, – said the director of the research department of Roskachestvo Lyudmila Vikulova.
Well, as for the “pumped up” watermelons, their experts refer to the area of urban legends. As soon as a syringe puncture appears in the watermelon, it will begin to rot. Rotten watermelons are definitely not needed by anyone, no one will buy them. In addition, the number of fruits on the melon is in the thousands. It is simply physically impossible to give everyone an injection of poison.
“Most likely, photos with pierced watermelons are fake, nonsense. Someone with nothing to do, stuck a syringe, pierced a watermelon, took and posted a photo: here is a watermelon pumped up with nitrates. Let’s say urea. But urea is the same fertilizer that is applied during cultivation. Nobody will pump it inside, because it just doesn’t make sense. Its presence does not in any way affect the quality indicators: taste, aesthetic, usefulness and others, ”says Artem Sokolov.