Food - Drink
Which Country Produces The Most Papayas?
By HALDAN KIRSCH
Papaya is a tropical fruit with a green-yellow exterior with rich coral flesh inside and is regarded for its sweet, tropical flavor when it is ripe, as well as its versatility. While papaya may originate from Central and South America, its popularity with European explorers gave the crop legs as it traveled with them worldwide and fueled a global appetite for the delicious fruit.
India has become the world's top papaya-growing country, producing more than 6 million tons of papaya yearly and outpacing the next closest producer, the Dominican Republic, by nearly 5 million tons. India's great success as a papaya producer in recent decades is due to the "Red Lady" papaya’s popularity and the country’s appetite for it.
In addition to being a sweet and delicious treat, papaya provides many essential nutrients that offer significant health benefits, such as reducing inflammation, reducing cancer risk, and improving heart health. Papayas contain the enzymes papain and chymopapain, which help break down proteins to aid digestion.
Papaya is a common ingredient in Indian food and can be prepared in a number of ways, including singzu, a raw papaya salad, or combined with potatoes to create vegan-friendly kebabs. Due to its flavor profile, papaya may easily be substituted in recipes for most melon varieties or other tropical fruits like mango and pineapple.