Papaya research and development in India - A review

Papaya is one of the fruit crops that is grown both commercially as well as a backyard crop due to its delicious taste and high nutritive value. Among fruit crops it has highest productivity (42.85 MT/ha). Its production in India is 6.01 million tons from 0.142 million hectares, which is around 6 per cent share in total fruit production. Dramatic change in the production of papaya, from 0.805 million tons in 1991 to about 6.01 million tons currently is attributed to technological changes and improvement in value chain management. Systematic cultivation of new gynodioecious and dioecious cultivars coupled with adoption of improved agro-techniques have resulted increased yield, which was quite low (13 to 26 t/acre) during the seventies. Studies on the inheritance pattern has helped in identifying the parents as gene donors for several characters. Exploitation of heterosis is feasible as these characters are controlled by non-additive effects to a greater extent. In recent times crop improvement is being carried out with the objective of developing cultivars resistant to ‘PRSV’ coupled with desirable fruit traits. Intergeneric hybrids are being developed using wild genera Vasconcellea for imparting tolerance to ‘PRSV’. The paper presents various facets and milestone of innovations, which has led to the transformation in papaya production of the country.