HI Stanofh,

I hope someone with experience answers this soon! I have been doing further research, and it seems some of these cv.s can grow up to 10kgs in weight! That is amazing. Also some suggestion that Maradol is a Mexican red dwarf selection, which seems a little unlikley if the usual Mex. is dioecious.

There are some very large yellow cv.s in Australia which I have had experience with, I wonder if these are the same as the fruit you know as 'Mexican'?

Ben

I planted a bunch of Mexican papaya seeds. Only 2 survived, so far, it looks like the one is male :-(
The other is still small, so I am hopeful......

I know I am responding to an older post, but hopefully this information will help still.

As most of you know, Papayas can have one of three sex types.

Female, Hermaphrodite, and Male.

Fruits from the female tree, will be more rounded in shape, those from a hermaphrodite tree will be elongated. commercially, the elongated are preferred because they actually give more fruit weight per crop.

When selecting a fruit to get seeds from, your best gamble would be from the elongated fruit ( from an hermaphrodite ) this is why, look at this little chart:

Fruit Pollen/flower ------Percentage-------

Parent____Parent__________Male_____Female____Herm.

Female______Male____________50______50________00

Female______Herm.___________00______50________50

Herm._______Herm.___________00______33________67

Herm._______Male.___________33______33________33

papaya plantations will have mostly hermaphrodites with a few females. ( the herm. can pollinate the females ).

how to use the chart. If you have a elongated fruit from a hermaphrodite. and it was pollinated from another hermaphrodite, there is 67% chance the seed from that fruit will grow to be another hermaphrodite, and a 33% chance it will be a female. If you used seed from a female fruit ( round shape ) their is a 50/50 chance of female / Herm plants.

In commercial plantations, they plant 3-4 plants in a spot close to each other, and as soon as they flower, and sex can be determined. the healthiest hermaphrodite is kept and the others are cut. in the off chance that they are all females, the healthiest female is kept.

This is why some seed suppliers, such as Aloha seed, can actually give you the percentage chance of sex, for their seeds. since they only grow Hermaphrodite, and remove all males, and only take seeds from hermaphrodite fruit. they can basically guarantee a 66/33% ratio of Hermaphrodite to Female plants.

If you only have 1 papaya plant, it MUST be a Hermaphrodite, which can self pollinate. a single female tree may never produce fruit, or very little if there is a distant pollinator.

I just ordered some Certified Red Maradol papaya seeds. and will try growing them in a SIP ( self watering container ).
not sure if it will work out. the idea is to only grow fruit on them 1 season, and start other replacements before removing the older ones.

Although the Maradol is a med/big sized fruit, they start to produce soon (7-9 months ), and close to the ground.

If I can get at least 10 good fruit, Ill be happy. commercially they supposedly produce 35 or so fruit the first season.

If anyone has had success with this, please post information on your experience.

I've read that the Mexican 'maradol' papayas are genetically modified, so i wouldn't plant them.

"I've read that the Mexican 'maradol' papayas are genetically modified, so i wouldn't plant them."

I ordered my seeds from Aloha-seeds, in Hawaii, certified red maradol.

I hope they haven't been contaminated. I know that the C/T/A/H/R ( University of Hawaii ) is offering GMO papaya seeds, and I read somewhere that there is a chance their "normal" varieties have been contaminated.

Listed as GMO's are"

Rainbow Papaya

Sunup papaya

The rest are supposedly your standard Hawaiian "Solo" varieties. Sunrise, Sunset, and Waimanalo .

I noticed some nice looking Indian varieties available from other sites but have no idea if they are GMO or not.

GMOs make Mother Nature unhappy.

looking into the matter of GMO in papaya, seems there is widespread contamination of traditionally non GMO Papaya varieties in Hawaii. Waimanalo for example on the main Island, is about 50% contaminated.

I think I did ok with getting the Maradol, because if it crossed with the Hawaiian type "solos" it would obviously effect the size of the fruit. So if it "did" cross with a GMO contaminated Waimanalo, or with GMO varieties like Rainbor, or Sunup, I would expect the "cross" to look very different from a normal Maradol.

India is also developing GMO varieties, ( what is the world coming to? lol ) the way I see it, eventually there will be no truly non GMO Papayas left.

there will probably eventually be no non-GMO crops left.
they developed an insecticide producing corn to be used for livestock feed. it didnt take long for this corn to contaminate our food supply and several people fell ill.
January of this year they discovered GMO corn causes organ failure in rats.
GMO corn syrup is in everything.

GMO corn was released with very little field testing, we are literal guinea pigs for even developing Countries who refuse GMO crops in states of Emergency.
but i suppose profits trump Science, worst case scenario we could always rely on Monsanto to start producing Soylent Green.

im done now, go ahead and call me an alarmist. :)

Tropicdude, yeah, unfortunately there has been cross-contamination in Hawaii with the worthless gm varieties (why you need to create gm papayas when they grow so easily here is beyond me.) It may just be the commercial mexican maradol papayas that are in mainland supermarkets which are GM; perhaps not the strain you bought from alohaseeds.

I know of one organic seed company I order from that tests all of the corn seed they sell to make sure no gmo's are inside; that would be a good idea for anyone selling papaya seeds as well, though it is getting more and more difficult to keep non-gmo corn varieties even in very remote areas. Mango Kush is right, GMO are poison, threatening to ruin perfectly good food crops.

Monsanto are crooks too.

they hired a team of lawyers to sue private farms claiming they stole proprietary information when there GMO crops started contaminating mom and pop farms in an effort to limit their competition.

When Hollywood makes up those really bad guys, a mega corporation that has influence on government and media, and has a bunch of goons. well Monsanto are those "Villains".

at least with the Papaya, situation, they didn't go out really looking to make a buck or have a monopoly on food production like Monsanto.

they did it because they just wanted to make a Papaya Ring Virus resistant plant to "save" an industry in Hawaii.

The path of good intentions is paved with disasters i guess.

I believe that nature always finds a way, I am sure PRV has been around for millions of years just as long as Papayas, and all thats needed is to breed resistance. as has been done with other plants in the past. but scientist have a new toy, and like to play the gene splicing game.

There is something they have discovered recently called epigenetics.

As wiki describes:

"In biology, epigenetics is the study of inherited changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence "

A great BBC documentary "Ghost in your genes"

Basically, you end up making un-intentional changes, by flipping genetic switches, which may not show up at in the 1st or second generation, but are passed down.

and what happens when these plants cross with others that may or may not have had their genes manipulated? who knows
we are running that "experiment" world wide right now. and we are the guinea pigs.