Papaya Dieback infection in Malaysia

A papaya die-back disease was first reported in Malaysia by the Johor State Department of Agriculture in 2003. By the end of 2006 it had spread to five other states on the west coast of the Malaysian peninsula, affecting ca. 800 ha and resulting in the destruction of 1 million trees. Total yield losses were estimated at 200,000 metric tonnes, equivalent to US$ 58 million. The varieties affected were Eksotika, Solo, Hong Kong and Sekaki. Early symptoms included yellowing and necrosis along leaf edges followed by water-soaked areas on the bases of leaf stalks, crowns and along leaf mid-ribs. Fruit symptoms included dark spots on the skin and water-soaked flesh. Later, necrotic and water-soaked areas developed on stems and spread to the internal tissues, followed by secondary fungal infections. In advanced stages bending of water-soaked leaf stalks occurs, leading to dieback, and death of trees.
After 6 years of research & trials MARDI has come out with DIEBACK BUSTER.

DIEBACK BUSTER was launched on 1st August in conjunction with Exotic Star (M) Sdn Bhd at one of their farm in Dengkil. This even was graced by YB Dato' Nogeh Gumbek, Timbalan Menteri Pertanian & Industri Asa Tani.

A short video was also shownDieback Buster - Teknologi Kerintangan Sistemik Teraruh (ISR)

 Developments & trials were done in various area including this farm. Successful rate is as high as 95%.

 Some displays at their exhibition booth

 

Dr. Ganisan Krishnen, the man behind DIEBACK BUSTER.
  The Adjustable Volumetric Liquid Gun. This is also developed to ease application for bigger farms in order to reduce labor, thus reducing application time and cost.

A grafted Solo Papaya tree.

Effect Of Raw Papain On Skin

Papain
Papain is a white colored latex that oozes out of the papaya when scratched, or when the plant is injured. There are many uses of papain, raw or processed. For the food industries, it's used as meat tenderizer. The enzyme helps to break down the tough bands between fibers in muscle tissue, making tough meats fall apart during the cooking process. For medicinal, (oral) it's used to aid digestion digestion problems, diarrhea, hay fever, runny nose, psoriasis. Treating infected wounds such as sores, ulcers, intestinal worms, or scars.

My experience with raw papain is when I have to help out to harvest our papaya. As we are short on labor. As we process our harvest in batch, when comes harvesting day, it's a full day process. Harvesting the papaya and post harvesting processing and grading.

During harvesting I had to pluck the papayas from tree to tree and place them into the wheel barrow. At times when there are more than 3 papayas, I tend to stack them on my arms and belly. This papain kind of  drip and come into contact with my shirt. As more and more papain comes into contact, and soaked into my shirt, it creates something like a patch and soaked into my skin ( raw papain overdosed). This is made worst by heat of the sun and sweat.

These caused irritation and blisters on my skin. I even washed the blister during lunch break on mid day. It was very painful when it comes into contact with water.
At the end of the day, after taking a bath which I had also clean the affected areas carefully (still very painful), I started to apply burn relief cream and moisturizing lotion. I always have some Johnson baby lotion at hand in my room.
The affected area gradually dried and healed. I'm sure that it shall be fully healed in a couple of days.

While washing the papayas, I always feel that the outer layer of my palm (epidermis) gets wash off as well. It kind of remove all the dead cell and make my palm smooth. This is doesn't create blister as it's diluted with water and I always change the water (overflow). Maybe next time I'll soak my feet in it to remove the dead cells :-)

This also start to make me curious on how to make papaya soap. Maybe I can try it out one day.
 How to make your own Papaya & Cucumber soap.


Looks easy enough.

Project Papaya V3.1 An Update

The 3rd batch 1st planting. The 3 Mas Solo, with fruits awaiting ripening.

Our 3rd batch of trial was started back in April and now is on the 8th month. As we plant in stages, we have tress in ranging from small to awaiting ripening. The last batch planted were in November. The 3 confirmed Mas Solos are awaiting ripening. From these 3 trees I was trace back approximately how many Mas Solo that we are having. Some of the characteristic that I had observed are, short height, sturdy fat trunks, and on the trunk where the leaves had fell off, it developed into an eye sharped marking in purple color.

2nd planting was close to our pond. The clay soil here is very hard and being a bulldozed ground, there were no top soil. We had quite a number of plants dying off, due to the drought. Some were replaced many times yet still not successful. There are only about 15 trees here, and of various stage of growth. I find that this the most challenging area as the ground and weather was at it most unfavorable condition. Even though it was close to the pond, the pond dried up during drought season.

3rd planting was at the most fertile ground, and close to the creek. Unfortunately as with the pond, it dried during drought. We have about 20 trees here and all of them are waiting to ripe. The trees have quite some fruits, but unfortunately due to the drought, quite a numbers are irregularly shaped and not fully developed. We shall most probably sell these off as green papaya or use the fruits for seeds. Most of the trees here are Mas Solo.

4th planting was done, inter-cropping with pumpkins. We had initial watering problem and many died during the drought. Here we ran into weeding management as there were pumpkins too. With the pumpkin harvested and out of the way, things got simpler. We did plenty replanting. This area is the largest and were split into 2 part, lower and upper. The lower section were planted first. The variety here are mostly from our local mother tree, and some maybe even Kampung variety. We may have up to about 200 trees here.

5th planting was done along the access road, just behind the row of Berangan banana. Again due to the drought, there were plenty replacement. Some of the trees here are Mas solo. After this planting, we continued to plant here and there, where we find any idle land, or land that is not fertile. As papaya can withstand 'hot' fertilizer. We use lots of chicken dungs on our papayas. We had also transferred close to 300 papayas into Parcel 1. Lately most of these are for replacement.

We had stopped propagating papayas at the moment as we had lots of unhealthy seedlings lately. Not sure if it's due to the seed source or nursery bed. Another reason is that we are waiting for the Mas Solo to ripe and propagate them. We hope the Mas Solo taste sweet and is accepted by the market. We hope that the fruits shall ripe soon, germinate and transplant just before the the dry season.

Powdery mildew.

Checked with the agriculture department the other day as they were running an incentive scheme for fruits & vegetable. Unfortunately we do not qualify. Looks like we shall have to do it on our own.

The initial 30 plants, the productivity has dropped and we has lesser harvest. We are getting lesser ripe fruits as we are harvesting green papayas too. Those that are irregularly shaped, we harvest it as green papaya. The pricing is only half the ripe papaya.

1 papaya tree were heavily infested by Powdery mildew. Had it washed down with fresh water, removing almost all of the Powdery mildew. Shall give it some fungicide soon.

Trunk of Mas Solo.

Supposedly to e non seasonal, I find that there is a growth period, and a flowering period, hence fruiting period. It's probably depending on the weather (temperature and rain). This affects our production, a period with fruits, and a period with no fruit. Am thinking if we can control the fruiting to regular basis. Maybe irrigation helps.

Stay tune for more updates.

Trunk of the normal Papaya.

 

Project Papaya V3

We use to have a couple of these during my childhood days. Well guess things are not what it used to be. Had been having problem with the weather, causing drought and wet stress on the plants. Then there is pest infection as well as fungus infection.

 Our third batch trial on Papaya started back on April. Germinating the seeds I guess was the easy part. I have faster germination and higher germination rate by germinating on a raised bed. I prefer this method as I find that it suits my local condition better as our water supply is inconsistent. Raised beds retain more heat and moisture that small germination tray. I didn’t have much luck using germination tray. We had some problem with chickens (neighbors) scratching on the raised beds and ants carrying away seeds during the germination period. Heavy drops of water / rain also created problem like toppling the seedling. This can be taken care of by putting shading net over it, a few inches higher than the raised bed. My guys are doing this, but I took the lazy way out, doing the raised bed underneath a tree, and blocking it with whatever waste that is available, such as old wood, bamboo & etc.

 

This time, I transferred the seedlings to poly bags after they germinated with 2 to 4 leaves. It is very tender at this stage. I feel that I am getting higher survival rates after transfer as there are so young and adaptive, or maybe they are too naive and is easy to cheat. I find using poly bags of 6 inches diameter X 9 inches deep provides more space for the root to grow and retain more heat and moisture. We can keep the seedling to even to a foot tall in this size of bag. Also it’s not too large or heavy to transport for field planting. These seedlings are kept under a shade of 70%. Correct amount of watering at this stage is critical. Too much, fungus attack, too little it gets dried off. Depending on the weather and field condition, I transfer them to field at a height of 5 inches and above.

 Once transferred to field, irrigation is also very critical for the first two months. We encountered some problem as it was hot and dry during, then sudden rain for some time. Also we need to water the plants as sometimes it’s real hot. All these factors caused the stem to break up, infecting the stem with fungus / bacteria. This caused stem / collar rot. We had some plants dying, died. We try saving the plants but at the same time, planted another one next to it. 

We had some mealy bugs attack. Fruit flies are also a plenty. We had started to wrap up the papayas.

Then came Fungus attack, Anthracnose and Powdery Mildew.

 

We also tried planting about 200 papaya plants, integrating it with pumpkins. As we were short of workforce and it was left uncared for a while. The weeds had grown too long. We are having a tough time weeding them. It can only be done manually with hand, as we do not want to damage the pumpkins and papaya. The pumpkins had bore some fruits, but due to the dry season and long weeds, the harvest was mostly damaged but rats. The weeds did helped by shading the papaya and help keep the soil moist. Had started to clear the weeds, but plenty more to go. Don’t think we can

 clear it before I go off for may vacation. Had requested my helpers to follow through on the weeding and fertilizing.

 

We have some papayas starting to flower and started to have small fruits. Need to do some fertilizing. The 3 surviving Mas Solo are growing healthily. We hope for these 3 to bear fruits so that we can propagate more of these variety should it pass our screening. Was looking closely at the 3 Mas Solo, then went around the farm, am quite sure we have more of them as some of the seeds were mixed.

Special thanks to Michael J, whom had offered plenty advice.

Stay tune for more updates.