PROMISING PAPAYA (CARICA PAPAYA L.) VARIETIES FOR SUBTROPICAL PLATEAU REGION OF EASTERN INDIA

The eastern plateau and hilly agro-climatic zone offers suitable climatic conditions for successful cultivation of papaya. It is being grown in the region since last 30 years particularly under homestead conditions. However, for commercial cultivation of papaya in the region, identification of suitable variety is of prime importance. So far, varietal evaluation in this direction has not been carried out under Jharkhand conditions. Hence, the present investigations were undertaken to identify suitable variety of papaya for commercial cultivation under Jharkhand conditions. Under this, an experiment was conducted during 1998-2000 to evaluate fifteen papaya hybrids/selections for vegetative growth, yield and quality attributes. The cultivars ‘Pink Flesh Sweet’ and ‘Ranchi’ had minimum number of internodes to first flower (48.26 and 48.66). Minimum distance (110.01 cm) from base to first fruit harvest was observed in case of the variety ‘Pusa Dwarf’. The variety ‘Ranchi’ recorded maximum individual fruit weight (2.04 kg), yield (34.92 kg/plant) and total sugars. Petiole length was observed to be minimum in the variety ‘CO-4’ (27.30 cm), the leaf size (length 30.71 cm; breath 29.32 cm) also followed the same pattern. The variety ‘CO-3’ accounted for the maximum fruit number (51.0) per plant. The maximum pulp thickness was found in ‘Singapore’ variety while the lowest cavity diameter was found in the variety ‘CO-7’. The variety ‘Pink Flesh Sweet’ had the maximum TSS and total sugars. The preliminary evaluation suggested that the varieties ‘Ranchi’ and ‘CO-3’ performed better under Jharkhand conditions. The varieties that could be useful as parents for improvement in future papaya breeding programmes were suggested.