Greenhouse cultivation of papaya

Papaya is a tropical crop which requires high temperatures to produce good quality fruits all year round. The papaya ringspot virus (PRV) is a serious commercial threat, against which only transgenic papaya cultivars have shown acceptable resistance. Greenhouse cultivation provides both adequate temperatures and exclusion of PRV vector and is thus the system of choice in subtropical countries like the Canary Islands (Spain), Israel and Japan. A description of greenhouses for papaya cultivation, cultivars, cultural practices and phytopathological problems occurring in these countries are given in this paper.