INTRODUCTION
The papaya(from carib via Spanish,) papaw or pawpaw is the fruit of the plant carica papaya, the sole species in the genus carica of the plant family cariceae.it has native to the tropics of the Americas, perhaps from southern Mexico several centuries before the emergence of the Mesoamerican classical civilizations.
The papaya is a large, tree-like plant, with a single stem growing from 5 to 10 m (16 to 33 ft) tall, with spirally arrange leaves confined to the top of the trunk. The lower trunk is conspicuously scared where leave sand fruit were borne.
The leaves are 50-70 cm (20-28in) in diameter, deeply palmately lobed with seven lobes. The tree is usually un branched unless lopped. The flower are similar in shaped to the flowers of the plumeria but are much smaller and wax-like.
They appear on the axils of the leaves, maturing into large fruit 15-45 cm (5.9-18 in) long and 10-30 cm (3.9-12in) in diameter. The fruit is ripe when it feels soft(as soft as ripe avocado or a bit softer) and its skin has attained an amber to orange hue.
The papaya is a fast-growing, small, tree-like, herbaceous plant growing to about 6 meters high, more or less. It has no branches, the stout, long petioled palmate leaves directly growing on the straight, soft trunks marked with large, rounded petiole scars.
The papaya fruit is large, rounded and oblong-shaped. It is green when unripe and yellowish-green or yellow with little spots of green
METHOTOLOGY
Make longitudinal incisions on mature green papaya fruits still unpicked, and collect the latex or milky juice.
The tool used for incising should not be made of metal to avoid discoloration. Once convenient tool is a sharp-edged bamboo knife.
Incisions should be made early in the morning, earlier than 10 o’clock.
The incision must each be 1/3 deep and about two inches apart.