Milk melon characteristics, features and uses

Everyone knows that milk melon is a delicious fruit, but do you know more about milk melon ? Let me introduce it to you.

Milk melon

(Scientific name: Carica papaya), also known as papaya, is a fruit of the family Cucurbitaceae in the order Cruciferae. The fruit grows on the tree and looks like a melon, hence the name papaya. The milk of the melon is the main ingredient in making meat tenderizer.

Features and characteristics

Perennial evergreen herbaceous fruit tree, with large leaves, clustered at the top of the stem, 5 to 7 palmately lobed, and unisexual or complete flowers.

There are male plants, female plants and bisexual plants. The berries are large and fleshy. When ripe, they are orange-yellow or yellow. They are oblong, obovate-oblong, pear-shaped or nearly spherical. The flesh is soft and juicy, and tastes sweet. There are many seeds, which are ovoid and wrinkled. The flowering and fruiting period is all year round. It is best suited for planting in warm areas with an average annual temperature of 22-25℃ and an annual rainfall of 1500-2000mm. The suitable temperature for growth is 25-32℃. The growth tends to be slow at around 10℃. Frost damage begins to appear in young organs at 5℃, and leaves wither at 0℃. Too high a temperature is also not conducive to growth and development. It has strong adaptability to soil, but acidic to neutral soil is preferred.

effect

Milk melon Milk melon has a wide range of uses. It is both a fruit tree and a raw material crop. The mature fruit is rich in nutrients and high in vitamin C, which can help digestion and treat stomach problems. The immature green fruit can be eaten as a vegetable, pickled, preserved, made into jam and canned juice, and is also a good feed. The green fruit is rich in papain, which is widely used in medicine, food, leather, textiles and beauty, and is the main raw material of the papain industry.

Economic Benefits

The general standard for harvesting milk melons is from the time when yellow streaks appear on the fruit to before the flesh softens. For those that need to be transported far away, harvest when yellow streaks appear and the flesh is hard. Pick the fruit carefully to avoid damaging the fruit. Hold the fruit in one hand and cut off the fruit stalk with a knife in the other hand, then gently put it into the container. In addition to eating fresh, milk melons can also be processed into juice, jam, candied fruit, and pickled fruit; the pectin contained in the green fruit can be extracted to make papaya pectin substitute plasma.

Milk melon is a small species of fruit tree in the south. The planting area in Taiwan is nearly 6,000 mu, and the output is nearly 15,000 tons. It is in hot demand. If it is developed in moderation in China, it can increase the variety of fruits in the market, and farmers can obtain better economic benefits from planting it.