Growing Food: A Guide to Food Production

Diseases: one of the main reasons for the short life of papaya trees: Mosaic virus is
the most serious; leaves turn yellow and distorted, plants become distorted and die.
Spread by aphids, which also spread other papaya diseases. Pythium rots are worse
in wet or waterlogged soil. Anthracnose the ripe fruit develops spots. Also:
mildew, foot rot, damping off and leaf spots.

YIELD

35 MT/ha per year, with each tree producing 30–150 fruits per year. Some fruits
weigh up to 10kg or more.
Papain: 45–170 kg/ha per year—50% in the first year, 30% in the second and 20%
in the third. Trees are then either replanted or grown only for the fruit. The average
yield in Tanzania is 45–55 kg/ha per year.

UTILISATION

• make soft drinks, jam, ice-cream flavouring and crystallised fruit. They can be


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  taken by tapping young, unripe fruit. Papain greatly resembles the animal
  protein pepsin in its digestive action. It is used as a meat tenderiser, in
  manufacturing chewing-gum and cosmetics, as a drug for digestive disorders
  and for detecting intestinal cancer, in the hide tanning industry, for degumming

  
  

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and jellies.

LIMITATIONS

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  of the male trees should be removed and replaced with female trees.

  
  

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Fruit: 10–15 MT/ha per year is possible with careful farming. Maximum is about

natural silk, for clearing beer and to make wool resistant to shrinking. That

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Fresh fruit—produced throughout the year, eaten when ripe and also used to

canned in syrup.

Papain—a protein digesting enzyme which is extracted from the dried latex

is all.

Unripe fruit—can be cooked as a substitute for marrow and for apple sauce.

Young leaves—can be eaten as a spinach , and used to tenderise meat the

young fruit can also be used for this purpose.

Flowers—occasionally eaten, as in Java.

Seed—used in some countries as a vermicide (worm killing substance), counter-

irritant and abortifacient.

Pectin—extracted from the by-products of canning, it is used in making jams

Papaya fruit is thin-skinned, easily bruised and so does not travel well.

The plant is killed by frost.

The plant is also susceptible to attack from nematodes, virus and other diseases.

The shallow root system is easily damaged by cultivation and weeding activities,

and means that trees are easily blown down by wind.

Monoecious varieties bear fruit on only about half of the trees planted, and most

GROWING FOOD – THE FOOD PRODUCTION HANDBOOK