12 
Papayas for market should be picked very soon after they show 
the first yellowing. In the case of some trees, particularly of the long 
fruited varieties, the necessary maturity is indicated by light green 
color. Certain varieties become ripe enough for serving while showing 
little yellow coloring. Papayas are so large and heavy that it is 
difficult to get them safely to the consumer if they have begun to 
soften when picked. Great care is necessary to avoid bruising. For 
local market they may be carried on the body of a spring wagon 
provided with straw, excelsior, or similar material, or, for more than 
one tier of fruit, racks may be provided. 
In the fruit-marketing investigations conducted by this station it 
was found that papayas can be shipped long distances. They were 
taken to San Francisco with very small losses and were marketed in 
small quantities from San Francisco, in Portland, Seattle, Tacoma, 
and Vancouver, B. C. 1 The chief results may be summarized as 
follows: 
Fruits, preferably of the long varieties, should be gathered when 
they show the first indications of ripening. They should be wrapped 
in paper and surrounded by a sleeve or cylinder of crimped strawboard 
before being placed in the single-tier crates in which they are shipped. 
It is important to get them into refrigeration as soon as possible. 
The crates used in these experiments are illustrated in Plate II. 
They proved satisfactory in dimensions but could be made of lighter 
material. 
It is well known locally that papayas, with all other fruits from 
Hawaii, except bananas and pineapples, are now prevented from 
being shipped to California because of the prevalence of the Mediter- 
ranean fruit fly in these islands. These directions therefore are 
repeated at present, not for any local applicability, but for whatever 
use they may be in other tropical countries. 
VARIETIES. 
Strictly speaking there are few, if any, varieties of papaya. A vari- 
ety, in the case of seed-propagated plants, is a described and named 
form, having certain well-recognized characters which are reproduced 
in the offspring with a reasonable degree of accuracy and usually 
maintained by artificial pollination or by segregation to prevent 
crossing with pollen from other varieties or species. Such work, so 
far as has been learned, has not been conducted with the papaya long 
enough to justify the naming of any form and thus giving to it the 
rank of a variety. This station has now in hand a line of selections 
and close pollinations which it is hoped may yield some forms suffi- 
ciently distinct and stable to merit naming. At present the station 
forms are designated by numbers only. 
i Hawaii Sta. Bui. 14. 
