For many the mango is the be-all-and-end-all of sweet summer treats, but a group of researchers is looking to dethrone it and put the pawpaw in its place.
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A research team from Griffith University has been selectively breeding pawpaw, or papaya, plants to make them more “palatable” to Australian tastebuds.
Researcher Rebecca Ford admits she finds pawpaw sold in supermarkets often tastes “like vomit” but said the varieties they were creating would have better texture and taste.
“We’re breeding away from that taste, and trying to get a flavour that is more competitive,” Professor Ford said.
“We’re certainly trying to give mangoes a run for their money.”
Professor Ford has spent the past 10 years working on the project, which she said was a side-effect of using selective breeding to improvements, which involved a lot of trial-and-error.
The mango industry generates about 60,000 tonnes of fruit a year, worth about $180 million.
The papaya industry by comparison generates about16,000 tonnes, worth about $37 million.
In addition to taste and texture, Professor Ford said they were also trying to develop traits that would help pawpaw growers.
“We’ve been looking for things like selecting crops which grow the fruit lower on the stem- papayas grow their fruit at the very top of the tree, and the tree grows very quickly,” she said.
“Within eight months you have a tree which can no longer be hand-picked, so if you create a tree which fruits lower down, growers won’t have to jump on hydraulic lifts which would keep costs down.”
She says they were about two years away from having a viable product that could be delivered to growers to produce on a supermarket scale.
In addition to the fresh fruit sector, some in the pawpaw industry were eyeing off other sectors where they could expand, including their use as a meat tenderiser, as well in products such as pawpaw ointment.
Professor Ford will be one of the speakers at a panel for the World Science Festival this weekend looking at global food security and sustainable food sources.
While the processes used by her and the research team are not technically genetic modification, she sees no difference in selective breeding and gene manipulation to obtain results.
“Effectively we are genetically modifying (the plants) by selectively breeding,” she said.
“Where there is an alternative that involves selective breeding, we should probably go to that first because it costs less to produce, but also takes more time.
“Hopefully in the end it will be more sustainable because you’re not playing with artificial introductions.”
