AN ASSESSMENT OF SOME OF THE EXISTING AND ALSO POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL CULTIVARS OF MANGO IN INDIA

Almost all our grafted varieties of mango have been selected from the naturally occurring superior chance seedlings having in view their earliness or lateness and superior fruit quality. Some of these are still confined to the orchards of few mango lovers and need to be exploited both commercially as well as in breeding work. All these varieties have a wide range of adaptability under North Indian conditions. For instance there is no difference in the performance of the variety Langra when grown at Varanasi or at Saharanpur although the two situations differ significantly in regard to climatic and soil factors. However, performance of the North Indian varieties undergoes a marked change when grown under South Indian conditions. The common defect with the commercial cultivars is that they are all biennial bearers and susceptible to mango malformation disease. While former is a long established problem, the latter is a comparatively new one and confined mostly to North Western India. The object of the present paper is to give an assessment of some of the existing and also potential commercial cultivars of mango in India.