The Rather Confused Sex Life of the Papaya
Should I be checking out the one on the left, or the one on the right?
I’ll admit it: I’m not a huge fan of the papaya. A little too tangy for my liking. What’s more, it’s got too many seeds.
But after hearing a report on Marketplace this morning, the piles of seeds started to make sense. I can’t find the link to the radio story, but here’s an article that sums up the situation. Apparently the papaya produces three sexes of seeds: male, female and hermaphrodite. Different seeds produce different kinds of trees, but only one produces the fruit: the hermaphrodite seeds.
In a hilarious trick of nature, it’s impossible for farmers to tell the difference between the seeds (think It’s Pat!, but with fruit). What’s more, trees grown from hermaphrodite seeds produce all three types of seed, not just more hermaphrodites. That means farmers have been planting clusters of seeds, hoping one of them is hermaphroditic, and cutting down the other plants. Not only is this frustrating for the farmers, but it’s wasting resources like water and land on trees that have no yield whatsoever.
Enter the science of genetic engineering (which has yet to achieve its full potential for awesomeness), as scientists at the University of Illinois are working to produce hermaphrodite papayas that would spawn only more hermaphrodite seeds, removing the guesswork from papaya farming. It’s fitting, as the papaya was the first genetically altered fruit to be approved by the Department of Agriculture for commercial farming, when scientists developed a form of the fruit that was resistant to papaya ringspot virus.
This got me thinking about the morals of genetic engineering. All kidding about dinosaurs aside, this is one clear and practical example of why we need to keep delving into genetics. As developments like this continue, they should be brought into the larger bioethics discussion of cloning and stem cell research. I think that the papaya studies are advancing our understanding of the world, as does the study of stem cells. In overcoming an obstacle, be it farming or Alzheimer’s, we’re better able to appreciate the complexities of life and how much still remains unknown.
On an interesting (and much crasser) side note, the following is an ad that appeared along with the PysOrg.com article. I was too timid to click on the links. Do so at your own risk:
Hermaphrodite Photos – Check 700+ expert shops with top Ratings & save up to 45% now! - hermaphrodite-photos.best-price.com
There is not a single comment I could make that would possibly be appropriate in a note signed “Mom.”