ABSTRACT
The papaya plants are propagated through asexual as well as sexual methods. In the case of asexual method, air-layering, cuttings and budding have been successfully practiced on a limited scale.
Air layering reproduces the characteristics of a preferred strain. All offshoots except the lowest one are girdled and layered after the parent plant has produced the first crop of fruits. Later, when the parent has grown too tall for convenient harvesting, the top is cut off and new buds in the crown are pricked off until offshoots from the trunk appear and develop over a period of 4-6 weeks. These are layered and removed and the trunk is cut off above the originally retained lowest sprout, which is then allowed to grow as the main stem. Thereafter, the layering of offshoots may be continued until the plant is exhausted. However, the aforementioned method is not feasible at a commercial scale due to the lower success rate.
