VIDEO: 9 Innovative Ways to Cut a Watermelon

This video will teach you nine original, innovative ways to cut a watermelon.

Summer is here and you’ll need something refreshing at hand.

Watermelon is most people’s favorite fruit during the hot season and it has plenty of health benefits.

The best part about it, though, is that it’s mostly water, which is extremely good for you during the summer, as it keeps you hydrated.

According to Wikipedia, watermelons are a sweet, popular fruit of summer, usually consumed fresh in slices, diced in mixed fruit salads, or as juice. Watermelon juice can be blended with other fruit juices or made into wine.

The seeds have a nutty flavor and can be dried and roasted, or ground into flour. In China, the seeds are eaten at Chinese New Year celebrations. In Vietnamese culture, watermelon seeds are consumed during the Vietnamese New Year’s holiday, Tết, as a snack.

Watermelon rinds may be eaten, but most people avoid eating them due to their unappealing flavor. They are used for making pickles, sometimes eaten as a vegetable, stir-fried or stewed.

The Oklahoma State Senate passed a bill in 2007 declaring watermelon as the official state vegetable, with some controversy about whether it is a vegetable or a fruit.

Citrullis lanatus, variety caffer, grows wild in the Kalahari Desert, where it is known as tsamma. The fruits are used by the San people and wild animals for both water and nourishment, allowing survival on a diet of tsamma for six weeks.

Watermelon fruit is 91% water, contains 6% sugars, and is low in fat.

In a 100 gram serving, watermelon fruit supplies 30 calories and low amounts of essential nutrients. Only vitamin C is present in appreciable content at 10% of the Daily Value. Watermelon pulp contains carotenoids, including lycopene.

The amino acid citrulline is produced in watermelon rind.

Charles Fredric Andrus, a horticulturist at the USDA Vegetable Breeding Laboratory in Charleston, South Carolina, set out to produce a disease-resistant and wilt-resistant watermelon. The result, in 1954, was “that gray melon from Charleston”.

Its oblong shape and hard rind made it easy to stack and ship. Its adaptability meant it could be grown over a wide geographical area. It produced high yields and was resistant to the most serious watermelon diseases: anthracnose and fusarium wilt.

Others were also working on disease-resistant varieties; J. M. Crall at the University of Florida produced “Jubilee” in 1963 and C. V. Hall of Kansas State University produced “Crimson sweet” the following year. These are no longer grown to any great extent, but their lineage has been further developed into hybrid varieties with higher yields, better flesh quality and attractive appearance.

Another objective of plant breeders has been the elimination of the seeds which occur scattered throughout the flesh. This has been achieved through the use of triploid varieties, but these are sterile, and the cost of producing the seed by crossing a tetraploid parent with a normal diploid parent is high.

Today, farmers in approximately 44 states in the United States grow watermelon commercially. Georgia, Florida, Texas, California and Arizona are the United States’ largest watermelon producers. This now-common fruit is often large enough that groceries often sell half or quarter melons.