A farmer in Can Tho City said Wednesday he had successfully harvested a new kind of watermelon that bears the map of Viet Nam on its skin after a year-long experiment.

The watermelon is heart-shaped with yellow skin, embossed with a Vietnamese map featuring the Truong Sa (Spratly) and Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelagos and Phu Quoc Island.

Tran Thanh Liem said he intended to produce 43 such watermelons, but only yielded three well-shaped ones due to poor weather.

A pair of heart-shaped watermelons with a Vietnamese map on their skin is pictured in Can Tho City

The farmer would thus delay his plan to market the “map watermelons” for this coming Tet.  He had intended to sell them at 7-8 million VND (326-373 USD) a pair.

Liem is known as the king of making watermelons shaped as gold bars and square watermelons in the city.

The idea of featuring a Vietnamese map on his watermelons came in May last year, when China illegally stationed an oil rig within Vietnamese waters.

With experience in making gold bar-shaped watermelons, Liem started working on the new idea, hoping that they would be available for Tet, which begins on February 19.

While the attempt proved a failure, Liem is still expected to enjoy a happy Tet with his square watermelons and those that are shaped as gold bullion with calligraphy that reads “money” or “luck” in Vietnamese.

Liem said he had harvested 150 pairs of such special watermelons, and will sell them for 1.3-3 million VND (61-140 USD) a pair.

The farmer spent five years of repeated experiments to master the watermelon shaping technique.

Watermelons shaped as bottle gourds are also available on some streets in Can Tho for 500,000 VND (23.3USD) each.