Evaluation of the morphological and quality characteristics of new papaya hybrid lines in Kenya

Abstract

Papaya (Carica papaya L.) is among the most grown fruit crops worldwide with high economic and nutritional value. In Kenya, the papaya industry relies heavily on imported varieties and farmers' selected seed whose quality is not known. Therefore, the morphological and quality characteristics of mature fruits of eight newly developed papaya hybrids and their control, Sunrise solo were assessed using papaya descriptors (International Board for Plant Genetic Resources). The results showed significant differences in fruit sizes among the newly developed papaya hybrid lines and the control, Sunrise solo with Line 4 having the longest and heaviest fruits. Fruits from Sunrise solo, lines 2, 3, 7 and 8 ranged from small to medium in size, while those of lines 4 and 6 were large. Line 1 had the shortest shelf life of 4 days while Line 7 had the longest shelf life of 11 days. The total soluble solids (TSS) varied from 7.4 in Line 8 to 12.3% in Lines 5 and 7. Hence, most newly developed papaya hybrids Lines showed traits that were comparable to or exceeded those of Sunrise and could be suitable for both local and export markets. However, there is a need to evaluate and characterize the newly developed papaya hybrid lines in different agro-ecological zones in order to monitor the influences of the environment, pests and diseases.

Morphological characterization of papaya accessions in Jember through multivariate analysis

“…In any case, in spite of the demonstrated significance of papaya, constrained inquiry about it has been found within the writing on the discriminative control of descriptors, or the satisfactory number of descriptors that could distinguish varieties. Some studies have been conducted to characterize papaya (Nishimwe et al, 2019;Fatria et al, 2019;Magdalita et al, 2021). However, most of these studies characterized papaya based on the desired character, using only part of the descriptors currently available for papaya, and in the different locations.…”

Effect of plant growth regulators on chemical quality of papaya (Carica papaya) cv. Red Lady

“…Moreover, with the advancement of technology, these chemicals can be supplied exogenously, in both natural and synthetic form (as their chemical analogs, hormone releasing agents, hormone sensitivity altering agents and hormone synthesis inhibitors (Hajam et al, 2017) [9] , in such a way that it can modify the plant production processes, thereby increasing the yield (Singh and Singh, 2009) [26] . Furthermore, the consumer acceptability of papaya fruits, largely depends on various physiochemical properties like TSS (Gaudence et al, 2019) [7] , besides affecting it's organoleptic value and shelf life (Vagadia et al, 2016) [27] . Considering this fact, the present investigation has been designed to determine the effect of various phyto bio regulators on qualitative aspect of papaya cv.…”