US: Illinois researchers to develop gender-bending papayas

File this under the “Who Knew?” category.

Turns out papayas come in three sexual varieties: male, female and hermaphrodite. And its the hermaphrodites that produce the flavorful fruit that’s often sold commercially and winds up in your fruit parfait.

From the grower’s perspective, hermaphrodite plants come with a severe handicap in that their seeds produce female plants which are commercially useless. And the problem is exacerbated by the fact that it’s impossible to tell the sex of the seed until it has matured and flowered. That means papaya farmers must plant five or more seeds together to maximize their chances of getting a hermaphrodite.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have received a $3.1 million National Science Foundation grant they hope will fund research that leads to the development of papayas that only produce hermaphrodite offspring.

“We’re going to change the sex of the papaya to help the farmers,” said University of Illinois plant biology professor Ray Ming.

Ming co-led an international team that produced the first draft of the papaya genome in 2008. The draft, which sequenced more than 90 percent of the papaya’s genes, offered new insights into the unusual sexual evolution of the papaya.

Source: stltoday.com

Publication date: 11/5/2009

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