What would a picnic be without watermelon? This juicy red treat is a welcome treat at festivities all summer long, but August is the month for homegrown watermelon. They keep on coming in September, but as the weather gets cooler the quality of the harvest diminishes.

This fruit has been an American favorite since before Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn sat on a log somewhere along the Mississippi River and enjoyed some, but recently folks have taken an increased interest in this fruit.

For example, people with diabetes, dieters and those who are watching sugars and carbs have had to minimize their consumption. That is too bad really, because with that delicious sugary taste comes an abundance of vitamins A, B6 and C and lycopene, an antioxidant.

People representing such concerns approached the USDA in Oklahoma and asked that they develop a lower-sugar watermelon. Although the concern is legitimate, one can’t help but wonder whether such a melon would be appealing.

Angela Davis headed up the Agricultural Research Service team who did the research. She thought at first they could come up with a good low sugar substitute quickly, but the process wasn’t as easy as it seemed. In an effort to keep the melons’ appeal, they wanted to get a bright red fruit with less sugar. It turned out that the sugar and lycopene content of the melons is linked in some way and when they bred out the sugar, they also bred out the color. Davis screened hundreds of watermelons from around the world — including wild watermelons — looking for those with high color and those with low sugar to make crosses. Eight generations of watermelons growing later, they have come up with high color/low sugar watermelons.

Davis claims that if you taste the low sugar one, you won’t know the difference between it and its sweeter cousins.

Two of the three new varieties are classed as “low sugar” with up to 50 percent less sugar than is found in conventional watermelons. The third is classed as “medium sugar” with 25 percent less sugar than a typical conventional watermelon.

The low sugar melon is a small- to medium-sized fruit. Tasters tried it with artificial sweetener sprinkled on it and found that it tasted just like regular watermelon. Tasters preferred the low sugar melon slightly over the regular melon.

The research has had a lot of positive feedback. People like the concept and are anxious to acquire seed that they can plant in their own gardens. Although it is not available yet, the fruits may be commercially available in the very near future.

We enjoy watermelon particularly during hot, dry summer months, but the National Watermelon Association would like to change that, making watermelon a 52-week fruit choice rather than the usual 14-week choice. The best way to do that is to create recipes that use watermelon in different ways.

Some of the more unusual ones include black bean watermelon salsa, which is considered a great side dish for anything that comes off the grill. It is excellent on chicken.

That is not so hard to imagine, but what about a watermelon stir-fry? Asian and Thai stir-fry dishes often have pineapple in them. The chefs making the recipes have tried using watermelon as a substitute for pineapple. The pineapple goes into the stir-fry dishes earlier because it holds up better under heat. However, if you wait and add the melon at the very end so that it warms without cooking, it makes a tasty substitute with a different flavor.

The recipe for flash grilled pepper dusted watermelon cheeseburger sounds so strange, it just might be good. You cut a rectangle of melon just the right size to fit a hamburger. Dust the rectangle with cracked pepper and grill it for 20 to 30 seconds on each side. Then add a slice of cheese and put it on a hamburger.

Some more conventional recipes include:

Watermelon Raspberry Lemonade

6 cups watermelon cubes (seeds removed)

1/4 cup raspberries

1 cup water

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup lemon juice

Place watermelon, raspberries and water in container of electric blender, cover and blend until smooth. Strain through fine mesh strainer into pitcher. Stir in sugar and lemon juice until sugar dissolves. Refrigerate until chilled, about 1 hour. Makes 4 servings.

(Recipe courtesy of watermelon.org)

Watermelon Coconut Cake with Raspberry Filling

1 watermelon

3 cups fresh raspberries

2 cups shredded coconut

Cut the center 8 to 10 inch slice from a watermelon. Lay it down on a flat work surface and cut around the rind and slide the rind off leaving a cylinder of watermelon.

Slice into 3 slices as you would a cake. Place a slice of the melon cylinder on a serving platter. Surround it with a ring of coconut. Place 1/3 of the remaining coconut and raspberries over the slice and repeat to form a 3-layer watermelon “cake” with the raspberries on top arranged attractively on the coconut.

To serve, slice into wedges and present them upright. Serves 8.

(Recipe courtesy of watermelon.org)