FruitVeB President Bela Martonffy said the reason for the campaign is that stores in Hungary are stocking watermelons from southern Europe, while the picking of Hungarian watermelons has just begun. Stores will sell their stock of foreign watermelons at a cheaper price, thus reducing the competitiveness of Hungarian watermelons, Mr Martonffy added. Imports, coming mainly from Spain, Greece and Macedonia between April and June, are about 10,000 tonnes annually. Hungarian farmers will pick an estimated 178,000 tonnes of watermelon on a total of 4,800 hectares of land, of which about 100,000 tonnes is sold domestically. The current wholesale price of watermelon is HUF 78 per kilo.