Carica papaya (Papaya)

I'm going to put this out there right up front: papaya is not my favorite fruit. I'm aware that this may strike some as heresy (notably, my wife). But there is something in the flavor of ripe papaya that always reminds me of of baby poop. And not in a good way.

That said, I am willing to keep coming back to papaya, if only to find out what the buzz is all about.

Like the soursop, sapote, and caimito, papaya is native to the Caribbean and Central America. Unlike those other fruits, the papaya has extended its reach around the tropics and, as an export commodity, into more temperate regions like North America and Europe.

Archaeological evidence suggests that papayas were first cultivated in Central America several centuries before the classical Meso-American societies emerged (around 2,000 years ago). The fruit grows on a single stemmed tree that can be up to 50 feet tall. Papaya trees grow rapidly and begin bearing fruit with 3 years. This rapid growth in part explains their popularity as a food stuff.

In the Americas,we tend to eat papayas as a fresh fruit. In China and Southeast Asia, though, papayas are often harvested while still green and served more like a vegetable – in curries and spicy papaya salads. One of my first encounters with payapa (outside of canned fruit salad), was a spicy payapa cole slaw in Laos that I still remember fondly.

However it is served, papaya – along with pineapples and bananas – are one of a handful of tropical fruits that have become a globally important crop. In fact, C. papaya was the first fruit tree to have its entire genome transcribed. This was done partially in response to an outbreak of papaya ringspot virus that threatened Hawaiian papaya production in the 1990s. Monsanto subsequently developed two GMO cultivars of papaya that are resistant to ringspot virus: SunUp and Rainbow.

Other non-GMO cutlivars with similar resistance have also been developed, which speaks to another reason behind papaya's success as a food crop: a relatively malleable genome that enables farmers to select cultivars for marketable characteristics (speed of growth, flavor, texture, durability). These are all important variable to control for if a fruit is to survive the long, damaging journey from tropical fruit tree to North American supermarket.

I can't say that I have any greater appreciation of riper papayas after having eaten them closer to their source. I could settle into a nice spicy papaya salad, though...