>>This isn't made up. This is a real story.
>>Funny and silly --
>>Now I don't want to get on the bad side of papaya lovers.
latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-papaya9-2009nov08,0,7270089.story
Papaya sex change in the works
The effort could weed out unproductive male and female plants so that farmers could grow only the fruitful hermaphrodites.
By Jodi S. Cohen
November 8, 2009
An effort is underway to perform sex changes on papayas. That's right -- the large, yellowish fruit.
Papayas, it turns out, have not just one but three sexes: male, female and hermaphrodite. The third produces the yummy fruit, but the male and females are mostly useless to farmers.
University of Illinois plant biology professor Ray Ming has secured a $3.1-million grant from the National Science Foundation to change the papayas' sex in an effort to grow only plants that produce hermaphrodite offspring.
Currently, farmers don't know which plants are hermaphrodite until the plants have grown and flowered -- meaning they must spend money growing more plants than they can use.
If successful, the research will allow papaya growers to save on production costs and use less water and fertilizer. The cost savings could be passed to consumers.
Ming is one of those consumers, though he notes that it's hard to get a perfect papaya in Urbana-Champaign, Ill. It certainly doesn't stack up to the fruit he just ate while researching in Hawaii.
"I don't eat it here that often," he said. "It is no comparison to the ones I have in Hawaii. It sometimes does not taste as good. It is wrinkled. It is old because of transportation and storage."
jcohen@tribune.com
Papaya sex change in the works
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Re: Papaya sex change in the works
Just like those lucky fruits to have gender changes given to them for free !
I mean, we know they are gay (fruits? hello??), and here they are, being given the best of both worlds, saucy, stick-stiff Stamens of Strength, along with pretty, pink, petulantly-positioned pistils... where is the justice?
Bi-sexual Bananas, Homo Honeydews, and Lesbian lemons are surely around the corner, and yet I, a human, have to beg and plead for years to have a crack at such societally-accepted genetic change. Grr !
Screw this... I'm going to eat some fruit salad.
I mean, we know they are gay (fruits? hello??), and here they are, being given the best of both worlds, saucy, stick-stiff Stamens of Strength, along with pretty, pink, petulantly-positioned pistils... where is the justice?
Bi-sexual Bananas, Homo Honeydews, and Lesbian lemons are surely around the corner, and yet I, a human, have to beg and plead for years to have a crack at such societally-accepted genetic change. Grr !
Screw this... I'm going to eat some fruit salad.