PRELIMINARY STUDIES ON INHERITANCE IN MANGIFERA INDICA L.

The mango is a highly heterozygous perennial of suspected allopolyploid origin (3). Consequently, the efforts made to study its inheritance pattern have met with little success (1, 5). As a result of a massive hybridization programme undertaken at this Institute it has been possible to raise a larger population of hybrids than have been raised by earlier workers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). This facilitated some preliminary insight into the inheritance of some characters in mango. The present paper deals with the observations made on the inheritance of growth habit, new leaf and panicle colour, leaf flavour, precocity in bearing, fruiting in bunches, sinus and green fruit colour.