Carica papaya L. exhibits monoecious and dioecious plants that usually take six months for phenotypic manifestation. Nursery culling aided by sex-specific DNA markers was envisaged to alleviate the unnecessary cost incurred by farmers for maintaining unproductive male plants that contribute to 40-50% of the population. The mechanism of sex determination in papaya has been described as a tri-allelic single gene system with alleles, M 1 -dominant for maleness, M 2 -dominant for hermaphrodism and m-recessive for femaleness with diploid zygotes; M 1 M 1 , M 2 M 2 and M 1 M 2 being inviable. Bulked DNA samples of male, female and hermaphrodite plants were amplified by Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RAPD-PCR) using 100 random primers. Twenty of most promising of these were analyzed among individual sex types. Two sex-specific fragments, OPC09-1.7 and OPE03-0.4 were associated with maleness and hermaphrodism. The segregation of these two markers was analyzed in the F 1 population obtained by selfpollinating a hermaphrodite plant. A linkage was detected between the RAPD markers, OPC09-1.7 and OPE03-0.4 and the male and hermaphrodite sex of papaya plants. These sex-specific RAPD fragments were cloned and sequenced for converting them to more authentic SCAR markers. The Southern blot hybridization of RAPD-PCR products obtained by amplification of female, male and hermaphrodite papaya DNA amplified by OPC09 primer using radio labeled recombinant plasmid detected a polymorphic fragment in male and hermaphrodite papaya sex types. The nucleotide sequence of OPC09-1.7 fragment showed the possibility of developing more authentic SCAR markers to enhance the accurate sex determination of Carica papaya at the nursery stage.