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Saturday 28 December 2013

Gender Bending My Male Papaya Tree

Male Papaya Flowers

I am now embarking on an experiment of my own in my backyard. I am trying to get a male papaya plant, which yields no fruit by the way, to produce female flowers so that it can bear fruits. I accidentally came across some blog posts saying that this 'gender conversion' is possible. However, the details are a bit sketchy.

At the moment, I have 2 male papaya plants, both measuring about 5 feet tall. I have driven an iron rod right through the trunk of one of these male plants, at about 1.5 feet up from the ground. As the theory goes, I have to stress the plant out somehow so that it will trigger some hormonal changes that will cause female flowers to be produced.

So far, after about 2 weeks, I have not seen any changes to this plant yet. If there is still no development over the next couple of weeks, I may take a more drastic measure, like cutting off the top part of the plant for example. These 2 papaya plants were planted about 5 months ago, with seeds taken from the same fruit. I am beginning to wonder if all the seeds from this particular fruit were male.

During the last 10 years, after having something like 20 odd papaya trees, only 3 were male. Some were planted by myself while others got germinated thanks to help of the birds, rats and squirrels within the neighbourhood. Of the 3 male plants, two were as mentioned above, and one that I had about 10 years ago which is my first male papaya tree encounter. Back then, having not seen male papaya flowers before, I was puzzled with the rather peculiar bloom. It was only later then that my Mum told me that they were male papaya flowers. I subsequently chopped the tree down since I only want fruit yielding trees (who wouldn't). With 3 male trees out of 20, the odds are not too bad, I think.

Female Papaya Flowers

The male papaya flowers are different from the female papaya flowers. Male papaya flowers can only be found on the ends of a long flexible flimsy stalk branching out from the main tree trunk. I have seen some stalks growing up to about 2 feet long in length. Female flowers on the other-hand are attached to the tree trunk, which makes sense since papaya fruits can be quite big and heavy when growning on a fertile soil. Both male and female flowers look quite similar - white petals with orange-gy center.



Update: 5th June 2014
After 6 months, my little experiment did not work. I even tried scarring the trunk with a sharp knife. The male flowers are blooming with no signs of any female flowers of any kind. I will be chopping down the male papaya trees soon.


6 comments:

  1. Did your experiment work? My plant is also male. I wonder if I should cut it down.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It didn't work. I have since chopped that male plant down not too long after posting my update.

      Some interesting facts from my backyard concerning papayas between 2015 and 2016:
      - roughly some 9 out of 10 papaya plants turn out to be male.
      - the female plants that I had subsequently had deformed upper 'heads'. They died not too long after.
      - most females plants that germinated were found growing where they were receiving mostly secondary sunlight. Sadly though, none of them produce any fruit. They subsequently died.

      From what I have observed, there seems to be a correlation between male papaya plants and high temperatures. At my place, 2015 was hot; 2016 even much hotter and drier.

      I only managed to get new healthy female papaya plants this year. So far, 2017 has been much cooler and the weather is much wetter.

      I hope this information will be of some use to you. Happy gardening.


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  2. I started planting papaya recently. 4 out of 5 were 'males' Am wondering if it is due to the temperature. Pretty hot nowadays.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. From my experience, there appears to be some direct correlation between getting male papaya plants and hotter climate.

      You might want to try germinating your papaya seed away from direct sunlight, under the tree canopy for example. I did notice that the chances of getting female plants were higher this way.

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  3. My brother plant from seeds, he wants male papaya and none out of 20 plants. He is in inland empire area, nearly desert, and summer can get to 90 or more. How hot is your area?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am from Malaysia. Average temperature where I live is around 32°C. But temperature was higher (and drier) than this when I wrote this blog post, maybe around 35°C. Hope this helps.

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