Overview of the Agricultural Research Council-Institute of Tropical and Subtropical Crops (ARC-ITSC) mango breeding and evaluation programme.
Swanepoel J. F., Human C. F., Snyman J. C., Rheeder S.
Author Affiliation: Instituut vir Tropiese en Subtropiese Gewasse, Privaatsak X11208, Nelspruit 1200, South Africa.
Yearbook - South African Mango Growers' Association 18 : 56-61
Abstract : The ARC-ITSC mango breeding programme is well established, which can be attributed to the Messina plantings where annual replacement of non-promising seedlings has been carried out since 1995. This has resulted in the continuous availability of fruit-bearing seedlings for evaluation. The replacement of seedlings will also take place for the first time next season at Malelane and Nelspruit. During the previous season, 7 new selections were identified for Phase I extension evaluations, bringing the total to 46 promising selections. In the Phase II plantings of 1992 and 1994 certain selections performed better than commercial cultivars but they could not be released as export cultivars due to negative fruit characteristics such as small fruit size. The total number of selections/cultivars in the scion evaluation project is 46. At this stage, 5 of the 37 rootstocks furnished reliable data. From these data it appears that specific scion and rootstock combinations will produce the best results.