49 years on, and this farmer, who is a school dropout in Kolkata, has only cultivated heat, chilli, cauliflower, onion, mango, and a native papaya variety on the small fertile land left behind by his late father.

As his farming evolved, he discovered that the native variety of papaya was vulnerable to disease and offered poor yield. It kept bothering him as a farmer. A few months later, he emerged with a proposal to perform an experiment using two species of papaya.

Using a trial-and-error method, he cross-pollinated the flowers of the hybrid papaya variety known as Red Lady 786, which produces fruit profusely, with the flowers of the native papaya.

Today, he harvests an impressive 75 metric tonnes of papaya annually. His new papaya variety places him among the top papaya growers in the Chinsurah-Mogra Block of West Bengal.

This yet-to-be-named papaya variety is the result of years of cross-pollination. Meet the farmer behind the innovation – Krishna Chandra Halder.

A new variety, a new identity

With 1,875 papaya plants, Halder now produces 75,000 kilograms of fruit annually across his 3.5 bighas of agricultural land in Uttar Simlapal village, Hooghly district. His papaya is similar in appearance to existing varieties but stands out for its elongated shape. Each fruit measures 15 to 20 centimetres in length and weighs between 500 and 750 grams.

Familiar as a table fruit, the papaya is sweet and aromatic, with orange-red pulp and black pepper-like seeds. Its garden-fresh quality and........

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