Heirloom/Seedling Mango Varieties of India – Potentialities and Future

Abstract

Mango is very widely distributed in India with more than one thousand varieties throughout the tropical and subtropical regions. Most of these varieties are of Seedling origin and are found to be growing as heirloom varieties from generation to generation. Survey carried out under the UNEP-GEF TFT project in the four sites viz., Chittoor, Amravathi, Pusa and Malihabad resulted in the documentation of Seedling types, which showed desirable traits in them. These varieties evaluated in situ, ex situ resulted in indicating the desirable traits, which would help in introgression through breeding. The promising among them were registered. Some of these heirloom varieties can be directly adopted for commercial cultivation. The diversity analysis based on the morphological characteristics showed similar trend as the molecular characterization.