With the temperature soaring, people have started opting for juicy watermelons to get some respite from the sweltering heat wave conditions and avoid health problems due to dehydration and sunstroke.
Watermelon sellers here are a happy lot with the sudden increase of sales over the last one week and a good price for the juicy fruit. The road near the municipal guesthouse in Karimnagar, particularly, is mushrooming with several watermelon shops selling different varieties of the fruit.
Local varietiesTo name a few, there are local varieties which are light green, hybrid capsule is dark bottle green and another sweet variety, ‘nandari’, which is also light green. The local variety is priced at Rs. 15 per kilogram and the hybrid variety of capsule and Nandari costs Rs. 20 per kilogram.
People mostly prefer the capsule variety because of the delicious and sweet pulp inside and similarly the ‘nandari’ variety also, which is crunchy and juicy. Traders say that they get the watermelons from Anantapur, Kurnool and also from Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
Amjad, a trader says that they are selling a quintal of watermelons everyday and hopes that the sales would pick up to two quintals or so in the near future. Tirupathi, who is fond of watermelon, says that it meets the requirement of water in the body and wards off dehydration during summer.
