Papaya

The papaya is neither a historic nor a dominant crop of Almería: it belongs to the diversifications the coastal greenhouses make possible, being a strictly tropical plant that only cover brings within reach of the peninsula. The CARISMED project has worked on two contrasting sites — El Ejido, in the Poniente, and Retamar, in the Levante — to observe how it behaves in a protected Mediterranean environment.

Four varieties have been followed closely: Intenzza, Caballero, Sweet Sense and Iuve, with differences in productivity, stability and quality by site and cultivar — results that do not justify announcing a massive sector. At the University of Almería, trials in a tall multi-span greenhouse, on sand-mulched soil with drip irrigation, have also explored how to train a plant that grows fast and clusters its fruit against the trunk.

The combined trials suggest the supply can cover much of the year, though that calendar is a potential of protected growing, not a commercial guarantee. It is the newest face of the huerta: the agriculture that invented the greenhouse in the sixties is now after fruit nobody expected from this shore.