DATE: Sunday, June 22, 1997                 TAG: 9706180071

SECTION: FLAVOR                  PAGE: F6   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ADAM BERNSTEIN, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   53 lines

ATHENA CANTALOUPE HAS ANTI-VIRUS ADVANTAGE

AMONG HER many roles, gray-eyed Athena was the Greek goddess of warfare. It would seem, then, that Athena's eponymous cantaloupe is properly named.

The Athena cantaloupe, just 4 years old but ever increasing in popularity among farmers, contains a fierce resistance to the fusarium virus, a soil disease that causes certain plants to wilt.

That's great news for farmers, but it has caused some debate about whether the Athena is any tastier than its peers.

Although the Athena has stronger vines, the fruit is not ``any more outstanding than any other variety,'' said Herman E. Hohlt, a veteran horticulturist.

``From a grower's standpoint, it's definitely an advantage to have the fusarium resistance,'' said Hohlt, who is also an assistant professor at Virginia Tech's Eastern Shore Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Painter.

Fusarium is a rather limited problem in Virginia, said Tommy Crittenden, the owner of Heart Seventeen Produce Inc., a 250-acre farm about 45 miles northeast of Williamsburg.

The disease mostly confines itself to the Eastern Shore of Virginia and lower Maryland, said Crittenden, a professional farmer for the past 15 years.

And anyway, he added, the Athena is ``probably the best cantaloupe out there. The flesh maintains its crispness, and there's considerable sugar content.''

The Athena rates a good 2 or 3 percentage points higher than other melons' soluble-solids ratio, which includes the fruit's sugar content.

Other popular varieties of cantaloupes include the Cordele (pronounced ``core-deal''), the Saticoy Hybrid, the Superstar and the All-Star. The Superstar and All-Star are the largest.

All of those melons have a soluble-solids ratio of about 10 percent.

``The Superstar was the old standby for backyard growers,'' Crittenden said, ``but the tremendous problem is that the sugars are not anywhere near the Athena or All-Star. It tastes almost like a pumpkin.''

The Athena also has the advantage of a weeklong shelf life, compared with the others' five-day maximum, Hohlt said.

To identify the best melons, Hohlt recommends finding a ``full-slip melon,'' or one in which a fully circular scar has been left from where the stem was removed.

``Full-slip melons will have a better taste, because they have full sugar and full ripeness,'' he said. ``The half-slip is not quite mature.''

This season's local harvest will see a delay of about a week, said Randy Brittain, a senior produce buyer for the Farm Fresh supermarket chain.

Below-average temperatures in May June are responsible, Crittenden said.

Virginia's cantaloupe season is usually Independence Day to Labor Day. ``Because of the long, cool spring, we're not going to have local cantaloupes by the Fourth of July,'' Hohlt said.

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