THE PAPAYA AND ITS RELATIVES 237 



of male trees to act as pollinizers), fruit of suitable size and 

 shape for market purposes, uniformity in ripening, good keep- 

 ing qualities, and good color and flavor of flesh. The dioecious 

 type has not been satisfactory in breeding, principally because 

 the staminates do not show the characters which are inherent 

 in them and which will appear in the fruits of their progeny. 

 "The hope, therefore," says J. E. Higgins, 1 "must lie in the use 

 of a hermaphrodite type. Here it is possible to select an in- 

 dividual of known qualities. This may be used as the sole 

 parent stock or may be combined with another parent of 

 known qualities. What mixtures there may be in the individ- 

 ual at the start may not be known ; but through repeated selec- 

 tions and elimination of undesirable characters, it should be 

 possible to produce a reasonably pure strain, provided, of 

 course, that the stock is kept pure by constantly avoiding 

 cross-pollination with plants of different characters." 



Some excellent hermaphrodite forms have already been pro- 

 duced, and, although they do not breed true, a sufficient number 

 of the seedlings are hermaphrodites and produce fruit of good 

 quality for it to be felt that a definite advance has been made. 

 Breeding work should be continued until a strain has been puri- 

 fied to a point that it will breed true and retain its fruit charac- 

 teristics as closely as do cultivated varieties of eggplant, tomato, 

 and other vegetables. 



Yield and market. . 



In the tropics papayas are in season during a large part of the 

 year and the yield is enormous, a single plant bearing in the 

 course of its life (not more than a few years) a hundred or 

 more immense fruits. In Florida the season extends from 

 December to June, with a few fruits ripening at other times. 

 Higgins and Holt say : " The first ripe fruits may be expected 

 (in Hawaii) in about a year from the time when the plants are 

 1 Journal of Heredity, May, 1916. 



