SAPPORO: A pair of Yubari melons sold for 2.7 million yen in the first auction of this season at a wholesale market in Sapporo, the capital of the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido, on Monday.

The price, the highest among all pairs of Yubari melons auctioned at the Sapporo Central Wholesale Market on the day, was up by more than 22-fold from the maximum price of 120,000 yen in last year’s first auction. Last year’s highest price dived from a record high of 5 million yen in 2019 as the novel coronavirus began to spread rapidly around the country at the time.

A total of 466 melons from the city of Yubari in Hokkaido were put up for auction at the market on Monday. Yubari melons are known as a seasonal delicacy, with the first auction for the fruit at the Sapporo wholesale market indicating the arrival of early summer in Hokkaido.

The 2.7-million-yen melons were purchased by Hokkaido Products Ltd., a baby food maker in Sapporo. The company will quickly freeze the melons and send them as gifts to a total of 10 families with children to be selected by lottery from among households filing applications on social media.

“We want to cheer up people with the Yubari melons at a time when hardships from the pandemic are continuing,” Hokkaido Products President Iori Kage said.

According to Yubari’s agricultural cooperative, harvesting of this year’s Yubari melons started Sunday.

Weather was unstable in early spring, but the quality of the melons is fine because producers efforts paid off, officials of the cooperative said.

While some Yubari melon producers face labor shortages as foreign technical trainees have been unable to visit Japan due to the coronavirus pandemic, the cooperative aims to ship 3,675 tons this season and generate some 2.2 billion yen in sales.

JIJI Press