papaya appears to be first document

papaya appears to be first documented by Oviedo, the Director of Mines in Hispaniola (Antilles) from 1513 to 1525, where he describes how Alphonso de Valverde took papaya seeds from the coasts of Panama to Darien, then to San Domingo and the other islands of the West Indies. The Spaniards gave it the name ‘papaya’ and took the plant to The Philippines, from where it expanded to Malaya and finally India in 1598 (Schery 1952). By the time papaya trees were established in Uganda in 1874, their distribution had already spread through most tropical and sub-tropical countries. When first encountered by Europeans, papaya was nicknamed‘tree melon’. Although the term papaya is most commonly used around the world (Burkill 1966; Storey1985), the fruit is also known as ‘kapaya’, ‘kepaya’, ‘lapaya’, ‘tapayas’ and ‘papyas’ in The Philippines, ‘dangandangan’ in Celèbes (Indonesia), or ‘gedang castela’ or ‘Spanish Musa’ in Bali. Malaysians and Singaporeans, primarily the Malays, refer to the fruit as ‘betik’, while in Thailand it is known as ‘malakaw’, ‘lawkaw’ or ‘teng ton’. Portuguese-speaking countries (Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, East Timor) refer to the fruit as ‘mamão’ or ‘mamoeiro’. In Africa, Australia, and Jamaica, the fruit is commonly
termed ‘paw-paw’, while other names such as ‘papayer’ and ‘papaw’ are also heard. The French refer to the fruit as ‘papaya’ or to the plant as ‘papayer’, or sometimes as ‘figuier des Îles’. For standardization, we refer to C. papaya as
papaya throughout this manuscript. Asimina triloba (also commonly known as pawpaw, paw paw, papaw, poor man’s banana, or hoosier banana) is indigenous to the USA. This genus and related species will not be covered in the review