“Yubari Melons” produced in Yubari-shi, Hokkaido, well-known high-grade brand melons, were put up for a season-opening auction at the Sapporo City Central Wholesale Market on May 26.
A package of two pieces of A-Grad Yubari Melon marked a record-high price of 3 million yen, breaking the previous record of 2.5 million yen.
Yubari Melon was just registered under the Geographical Indication (GI) Protection System last year. The GI Protection System, administrated by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), aims to guarantee high qualities of products which have unique values of specific regions. People of the Yubari-shi Agricultural Cooperative (JA) appreciated that MAFF’s GI System had given a push to the new record-high price at the wholesale market.
The JA Yubari-shi applied for Yubari Melon’s registration under MAFF’s GI Protection System, which was successfully filed in an initial list of GI registered products last December.
The latest auction was held for the first time since the Yubari Melon was registered under the GI Protection System. “We had expected that acquisition of the GI qualification would further raise the brand strength of our Yubari Melon. The result of the season-opening auction was really what we had expected,” Naomichi Suzuki, mayor of Yubari-shi emphasized.