Papaya Fruit

The skin of the papaya is green when it is young, changing to a yellowish-orange as it ripens. The easiest way to eat a papaya is to cut it in half along its length and then cut each half lengthwise to make quarters. Use a spoon to gently scrape away the small, round, black seeds

As a "tree", the plant is a large herb growing at the rate of 6 to 10 ft (1.8-3 m) the first year and reaching 20 or even 30 ft (6-9 m) in height, with a hollow green or deep-purple stem becoming 12 to 16 in (30-40 cm) or more thick at the base and roughened by leaf scars. The leaves emerge directly from the upper part of the stem in a spiral on nearly horizontal petioles 1 to 3 1/2 ft (30-105 cm) long, hollow, succulent, green or more or less dark purple. The blade, deeply divided into 5 to 9 main segments, each irregularly subdivided, varies from 1 to 2 ft (30-60 cm) in width and has prominent yellowish ribs and veins. The life of a leaf is 4 to 6 months. Both the stem and leaves contain copious white milky latex. The 5-petalled flowers are fleshy, waxy and slightly fragrant. Some plants bear only short-stalked pistillate (female) flowers, waxy and ivory-white; or hermaprodite (perfect) flowers (having female and male organs), ivory-white with bright-yellow anthers and borne on short stalks; while others may bear only staminate (male) flowers, clustered on panicles to 5 or 6 ft (1.5-1.8 m) long. There may even be monoecious plants having both male and female flowers. Some plants at certain seasons produce short-stalked male flowers, at other times perfect flowers. This change of sex may occur temporarily during high temperatures in midsummer. Some "all-male" plants occasionally bear, at the tip of the spray, small flowers with perfect pistils and these produce abnormally slender fruits. Male or hermaphrodite plants may change completely to female plants after being beheaded. Generally, the fruit is melon-like, oval to nearly round, somewhat pyriform, or elongated club-shaped, 6 to 20 in (15-50 cm) long and 4 to 8 in (10-20 cm) thick; weighing up to 20 lbs (9 kg). Semi-wild (naturalized) plants bear miniature fruits 1 to 6 in (2.5-15 cm) long. The skin is waxy and thin but fairly tough. When the fruit is green and hard it is rich in white latex. As it ripens, it becomes light- or deep-yellow externally and the thick wall of succulent flesh becomes aromatic, yellow, orange or various shades of salmon or red. It is then juicy, sweetish and somewhat like a cantaloupe in flavor; in some types quite musky. Attached lightly to the wall by soft, white, fibrous tissue, are usually numerous small, black, ovoid, corrugated, peppery seeds about 3/16 in (5 mm) long, each coated with a transparent, gelatinous aril.

Propagation Papayas are generally grown from seed. Germination may take 3 to 5 weeks. It is expedited to 2 to 3 weeks and percentage of germination increased by washing off the aril. Then the seeds need to be dried and dusted with fungicide to avoid damping-off, a common cause of loss of seedlings. Well-prepared seeds can be stored for as long as 3 years but the percentage of germination declines with age. Dipping for 15 seconds in hot water at 158º F (70º C) and then soaking for 24 hrs in distilled water after removal from storage will improve the germination rate. If germination is slow at some seasons, treatment with gibberellic acid may be needed to get quicker results. To reproduce the characteristics of a preferred strain, air-layering has been successfully practiced on a small scale. All offshoots except the lowest one are girdled and layered after the parent plant has produced the first crop of fruit. Later, when the parent has grown too tall for convenient harvesting the top is cut off and new buds in the crown are pricked off until offshoots from the trunk appear and develop over a period of 4 to 6 weeks. These are layered and removed and the trunk cut off above the originally retained lowest sprout which is then allowed to grow as the main stem. Thereafter the layering of offshoots may be continued until the plant is exhausted. Rooting of cuttings has been practiced in South Africa, especially to eliminate variability in certain clones so that their performance can be more accurately compared in evaluation studies. Softwood cuttings made in midsummer rooted quickly and fruited well the following summer. Cuttings taken in fall and spring were slow to root and deficient in root formation. The commercial cultivar 'Honey Gold' is grown entirely from cuttings. Once rooted, the cuttings are planted in plastic bags and kept under mist for 10 days, and then put in a shade house for hardening before setting in the field. Hawaiian workers have found that large branches 2-3 ft (60-90 cm) long rooted more readily than small cuttings. Planted 1 ft (30 cm) deep in the rainy season, they began fruiting in a few months very close to the ground. In budding experiments both Forkert and chip methods have proved satisfactory in Trinidad. However, it is reported that a vegetatively propagated selected strain deteriorates steadily and is worthless after 3 or 4 generations. In Hawaii, 'Solo' grafted onto 'Dwarf Solo' was reduced in vigor and productivity, but 'Dwarf Solo' grafted onto 'Solo' showed improved performance. In recent years, the potential of rapid propagation of papaya selections by tissue culture is being explored and promises to be feasible even for the establishment of commercial plantations of superior strains. Efforts have been made to determine the sex of seedlings in the nursery, Indian scientists making colorimetric tests of leaf extracts have had 87% success in identifying seedlings as female; 67% in classifying males/bisexuals grouped together.

The Papaya palm-like plant