THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL MANGO BREEDING PROJECT

The Australian Mango Industry is currently based upon one cultivar, Kensington Pride. Whilst this cultivar has wide consumer acceptance, it has a number of serious agronomic problems, which impact greatly on the economic of production, such as low irregular yields, excessive vigour, short shelf life and susceptibility to a range of pre- and post-harvest physiological disorders and diseases.

The Australian National Mango Breeding Program was set up as a joint venture between four scientific organisations in 1994 to address some of these issues. The breeding program is based on controlled crosses using, Kensington Pride as the dominant paternal parent and a range of Indian, Floridian and Southeast Asian cultivars as the maternal parent. Teams from the four organisations have cooperated to generated 1896 hybrids from 33 parental combinations in the initial hybridisation phase of the program. This extensive range of hybrids will enable us to conduct heritability studies that will benefit future breeding programs. The techniques used and cultivar incompatibilities encountered are discussed.