why melons turn their colour?
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My daughter is a watermelon fiend. Given the option, she would eat nothing but watermelon at every meal. In the midst of a recent watermelon binge, my daughter paused long enough to spit out a question along with a black seed.
“Why are watermelons red inside, Mommyo?”
I didn’t know, so my daughter graciously granted me an iPhone exemption so that I could find out. (As you may remember, iPhones aren’t allowed at mealtimes.)
Turns out ripe watermelons get their red color from lycopene, the same stuff that makes tomatoes red and carrots orange.
And though strawberries and cherries are also red, lycopene isn’t to blame for that. Strawberries and cherries get their lush red hues from anthocyanins, which when mixed with the increasing sugar in the ripening strawberry and cherry fruits turns the fruit red. Interestingly, the same stuff mixes with sugar in the more alkaline blueberry to turn the berries a distinctive blue. (Sound familiar? It should. Anthocyanins are used to make everyone’s favorite chemistry tool — litmus paper.)
My daughter is a watermelon fiend. Given the option, she would eat nothing but watermelon at every meal. In the midst of a recent watermelon binge, my daughter paused long enough to spit out a question along with a black seed.
“Why are watermelons red inside, Mommyo?”
I didn’t know, so my daughter graciously granted me an iPhone exemption so that I could find out. (As you may remember, iPhones aren’t allowed at mealtimes.)
Turns out ripe watermelons get their red color from lycopene, the same stuff that makes tomatoes red and carrots orange.
And though strawberries and cherries are also red, lycopene isn’t to blame for that. Strawberries and cherries get their lush red hues from anthocyanins, which when mixed with the increasing sugar in the ripening strawberry and cherry fruits turns the fruit red. Interestingly, the same stuff mixes with sugar in the more alkaline blueberry to turn the berries a distinctive blue. (Sound familiar? It should. Anthocyanins are used to make everyone’s favorite chemistry tool — litmus paper.)
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bcoz of water content and climate
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