Showing Food Papaya
General Information | |||||||||||
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Name | Papaya | ||||||||||
Scientific Name | Carica papaya | ||||||||||
Description | The papaya, papaw, or pawpaw is the fruit of the plant Carica papaya, the sole species in the genus Carica of the plant family Caricaceae. It is native to the tropics of the Americas, perhaps from southern Mexico and neighbouring Central America. It was first cultivated in Mexicoseveral centuries before the emergence of the Mesoamerican classical civilizations. The papaya is a large, tree-like plant, with a single stem growing from 5 to 10 m (to ft) tall, with spirally arranged leaves confined to the top of the trunk. The lower trunk is conspicuously scarred where leaves and fruit were borne. The leaves are large, 50–70 cm in diameter, deeply palmately lobed, with seven lobes. Unusually for such large plants, the trees are dioecious. The tree is usually unbranched, unless lopped. The flowers are similar in shape to the flowers of the Plumeria, but are much smaller and wax-like. They appear on the axils of the leaves, maturing into large fruit - 15–45 cm long and 10–30 cm in diameter. The fruit is ripe when it feels soft (as soft as a ripe avocado or a bit softer) and its skin has attained an amber to orange hue. Carica papaya was the first transgenic fruit tree to have its genome deciphered. | ||||||||||
Primary ID | FOOD00041 | ||||||||||
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Group | Fruits | ||||||||||
Sub-Group | Tropical fruits | ||||||||||
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ITIS ID | 22324 | ||||||||||
Wikipedia ID | Papaya | ||||||||||
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Content Reference | — Duke, James. 'Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases. United States Department of Agriculture.' Agricultural Research Service, Accessed April 27 (2004). — Saxholt, E., et al. 'Danish food composition databank, revision 7.' Department of Nutrition, National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark (2008). — U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. 2008. USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 21. Nutrient Data Laboratory Home Page. — Shinbo, Y., et al. 'KNApSAcK: a comprehensive species-metabolite relationship database.' Plant Metabolomics. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2006. 165-181. |