PAPAYA SEX CHANGES

Scientists are trying to figure out how to do sex-change operations...on papayas. See, there are three genders of papaya fruit, the male, the female and the hermaphrodite. Of the three, the hermaphrodite is the only one that’s delicious to eat, but farmers can’t tell until the plants have flowered if it will be an edible fruit or the useless male or female varieties. Biologists at the University of Illinois, however, are spending $3.1 million on plant sex-changes in an attempt to grow only plants with hermaphrodite offspring.