Effects of maturity at harvest and ripening on the eating quality of papaw fruit

Abstract

Papaw fruit, (Carica papaya L.), derived from an experimental breeding programme, were harvested from 2 locations at 8 maturities, ranging from small, dark green fruit to fully-coloured, tree-ripened fruit. Dark green fruit developed yellow skin colour during ripening at the same rate as pale green `breaker' fruit, but did not have the same extent of skin-colour development at eating ripe as more mature fruit. Overall, unripe fruit which had reached or closely approached full maturity on the tree, had better eating quality when ripened than immature fruit. Therefore, papaw fruit should not be harvested before reaching full maturity (pale green to tinge of colour). There were low correlation coeff. for all maturities (even mature fruit) between `greenlife' and skin colour, flesh colour, aroma, flavour and texture of ripened fruit. This indicated that, even with fruit selected from a post-harvest plant improvement programme relationships were poor between maturity at harvest and ripe fruit quality.