It’s currently being called “lemon melon” as it is round and juicy, tastes sweet like a melon and also slightly sour like a lemon.

It looks like a watermelon, but without the stripes, while the inside is white. According to reports, the texture of the fruit starts out crisp like a pear, but as it ripens, it gets much softer, so there are several different ways to enjoy it.

The new fruit is being cultivated in limited quantities by five farmers in Hokkaido.

According to Japan Today, Suntory Flowers – the Japanese horticulture company that developed the fruit – said it bred the unique offering from a type of melon originally imported from overseas and have been working on it for the past five years.

The current product, which is propagated with lemons, is the result of countless experiments on cultivation methods and harvest times, and this is the first year that they can sell them.

According to the Suntory website, the melon is “a perfect reward dessert of hot summer with refreshing acidity”.

This year, the company is expecting to cultivate about 3,800 lemon melons, which will be sold in Sapporo supermarkets until the end of August. They currently retail for 3,220 yen ($22) each.

This is the latest addition to Japan’s luxury fruit market, which includes items such as white strawberries, square-shaped watermelons, the Dekopon citrus, a hybrid of mandarin and oranges, as well as Ruby Roman grapes and Miyazaki mangoes, the most expensive in the world.

(National News)

India is set to launch its third Moon mission, aiming to be the first to land near its little-explored south pole.

The Chandrayaan-3 craft with an orbiter, lander and a rover is due to lift off at 14:35 on Friday (09:05 GMT) from Sriharikota space center.

The lander is due to reach the Moon on 23-24 August, space officials said.

If successful, India will be only the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, following the US, the former Soviet Union and China.

The third in India’s programme of lunar exploration, Chandrayaan-3 is expected to build on the success of its earlier Moon missions.

It comes 13 years after the country’s first Moon mission in 2008, which carried out “the first and most detailed search for water on the lunar surface and established the Moon has an atmosphere during daytime”, said Mylswamy Annadurai, project director of Chandrayaan-1.

Chandrayaan-2 – which also comprised an orbiter, a lander and a rover – was launched in July 2019 but it was only partially successful. Its orbiter continues to circle and study the Moon even today, but the lander-rover failed to make a soft landing and crashed during touchdown. It was because of “a last-minute glitch in the braking system”, explained Mr Annadurai.

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath has said they have carefully studied the data from the last crash and carried out simulation exercises to fix the glitches.

Chandrayaan-3, which weighs 3,900kg and cost 6.1bn rupees ($75m; £58m), has the “same goals” as its predecessor – to ensure a soft-landing on the Moon’s surface, he added.

The lander (called Vikram, after the founder of Isro) weighs about 1,500kg and carries within its belly the 26kg rover which is named Pragyaan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom.

After Friday’s lift-off, the craft will take about 15 to 20 days to enter the Moon’s orbit. Scientists will then start reducing the rocket’s speed over the next few weeks to bring it to a point which will allow a soft landing for Vikram.

If all goes to plan, the six-wheeled rover will then eject and roam around the rocks and craters on Moon’s surface, gathering crucial data and images to be sent back to Earth for analysis.

“The rover is carrying five instruments which will focus on finding out about the physical characteristics of the surface of the Moon, the atmosphere close to the surface and the tectonic activity to study what goes on below the surface. I’m hoping we’ll find something new,” Mr Somanath told Mirror Now.

(BBC News)

Over 122 million more people are facing hunger in the world since 2019 due to the pandemic and repeated weather shocks and conflicts, including the war in Ukraine, according to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report published yesterday (12) jointly by five United Nations specialized agencies.

The 2023 edition of the report reveals that between 691 and 783 million people faced hunger in 2022, with a mid-range of 735 million. This represents an increase of 122 million people compared to 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

If trends remain as they are, the Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger by 2030 will not be reached, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) warn.

(Excerpts : UN)