EXOTICA PAPAYA - FROM MALAYSIA!!!

PAPAYA (Carica papaya Linn.) or commonly known as papaya, is a major tropical crop consumed worldwide either as a vegetable or fresh fruit or processed products. In Malaysia, papaya was initially planted as a smallholder crop throughout the country. Eventually after 15 years of breeding and selection currently a new papaya variety named as the  C. papaya L. var. Eksotika, was released by the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) in 1987. This event changed the outlook of papaya planting from a smallholder crop to a plantation crop. Despite the blooming papaya business, the industry faced various disease issues that jeopardize its future. The most devastating was the papaya dieback disease, which affected approximately 800 hectares of plantation, destroyed approximately 1 million trees nationwide with total losses estimated at US$ 58 million. Even though Eksotika is a favored commercial variety with good eating and aesthetic quality fruit, its potential for more lucrative distant markets is tarnished with its short-shelf life fruits. Several strategies had been reported to address the challenges faced by Eksotika specifically against the dieback disease and the fruit’s short shelf-life. This review focuses on C. papaya L. var. Eksotika particularly on the strategies to address the challenges faced in order to sustain the economic value of this crop plant, which had contributed significantly to the Malaysian economy.

Malaysia are in the era of a technological revolution that is transforming our lifestyles at an exponential pace, transcending the boundaries that separate the physical, digital, and biological spheres. The existence of cyber infrastructure, big data management and data mining capabilities warrant careful planning and coordination in order to capture valuable resources for our respective research. As all these cyber technologies evolve around us, the basic problems pertaining to agricultural crops will still persist, only this time the solutions are more in-depth and can be solved at a faster pace since access to knowledge has become unlimited. The journey of Eksotika papaya research (summarized in is without doubt tough but still rewarding. The huge economic losses became an impetus and motivation for researchers to find a solution to sustain the papaya industry. Even though there is yet a long-term solution to the dieback problem, fundamental groundwork had been initiated with frontier technologies incorporated in short-, mid-, and long-term strategies by different research groups to address the challenge. The availability of the -omics databases (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) will ultimately make it feasible to tackle the challenges more effectively by providing a more comprehensive data sets to gain novel insights into the principles of biological systems. It is with great hope, though, that such frontier technologies will be made cheaper in future to allow a wider coverage of the subject matter under scrutiny. Thanks!....

By,

M Anim,

Senior Agronomist,

Precint 11, Putrajaya,

Malaysia.

(2 Syawal 1441Hijrah)

25 May 2020.