2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. All rights are reserved. Papaya is a major fruit crop of the tropics with minor production in the subtropics. The papaya genome is small (372 Mbp) and has evolutionarily primitive sex chromosomes. These characters justify papaya genomics programs. Recently, a draft of the papaya genome has been sequenced, and the male-specific region of the Y chromosome (MSY) and its corresponding region of the X chromosome have been fully sequenced. Sequencing the papaya genome and the MSY will enhance our capacity to explore the origin and evolution of dioecy in the family of Caricaceae, expand our knowledge on genome evolution by serving as an outgroup for the intensively studied family Brassicaceae, identify candidate genes for target traits, and provide genome-wide DNA markers for papaya improvement.
