Mango

Abstract

Although the mango has been in cultivation for several thousand years, today’s orchards consist of vegetatively propagated selections that date only to the 16th century. According to Mukherjee (1997), the Portuguese probably introduced grafting methods into the Indian subcontinent, at which time it became possible to vegetatively propagate selections of superior seedling mango trees, including ‘Alphonso’, ‘Dashehari’, ‘Langra’, ‘Rani Pasand’ and ‘Safdar Pasand’. The rapid expansion of the mango industry that has occurred worldwide in the last 25 years has largely been based upon modern selections, i.e., ‘Haden’, ‘Keitt’, ‘Kent’ and ‘Tommy Atkins’, which were identified from (uncontrolled) openly pollinated seedlings in Florida, USA. Thus, with a few exceptions, most mango cultivars have not emerged from breeding programmes. In their review of the accomplishments of conventional mango breeding, Iyer andDegani (1997) identifiedanumber of cultivars that have been released in recent years. These include ‘Amrapalli’, ‘Arka Anmol’, ‘Arka Aruna’, ‘Arka Puneet’, ‘Au-Rumani’, ‘Ceriese’, ‘Heidi’, ‘Mallika’, ‘Manjiri’, ‘Neeleshan’, ‘Neeleshan Gujerat’, ‘Neeleshwari’, ‘Neelgoa’, ‘Neelphonso’, ‘Neeludin’, ‘Neldawn’, ‘Neldica’, ‘Ratna’ and ‘Swarnajehangir’, amongst which only ‘Mallika’ has achieved consumer acceptance. For cultural reasons, there has been resistance to change from the traditional outstanding cultivars to newer selections in mango-producing countries of Southeast and South Asia.