Why is my pepino melon bitter?

Question

About a year ago, I bought a pepino dulce fruit from the store. It had white skin with purple stripes, and its flesh tasted slightly sweet, but nothing off-putting about it. So I decided to plant a seed, just for the fun of it.

Months later, and the plant had grown and produced a bunch of fruit. I decided to pick the oldest one, which was yellow with purple stripes. The fruit had been on the plant for about 80 days, but I had to use scissors to detach it, as it wouldn't come off easily. The fruit didn't seem to yield to gentle pressure.

The flesh of the fruit was juicy, tasted sweet and had that characteristic pepino dulce flavor, but it was too bitter to swallow, rendering the fruit inedible. The skin of the fruit was even more bitter.

Shouldn't the fruit be ripe by the time it turns yellow?

Answer 1

You should have waited until the fruit yielded under pressure, as fruit color alone can sometimes be an unreliable indicator of ripeness - astringent persimmons are a prime example, able to be bright orange while still being paralysingly bitter.

Additionally, supermarket hybrids are renowned for producing offspring with unreliable characteristics - you may have been unlucky and grown an inferior plant.