Advances in classical breeding and genetics in mango

Inspite of the difficulties encountered in mango hybridization with controlled pollination significant progress has been made in the recent past with regard to release of new hybrid varieties from many centres. Many countries have initiated mango breeding programmes with well defined objectives. In many countries, large number of hybrids are under intense screening and it is expected that many more hybrid cultivars will be released in the near future. As in any other perennial crop, in mango also the adoption rate of new cultivars is slow for obvious reasons. Clonal selection within many cultivars has yielded valuable results and hence appears to be worth pursuing particularly in countries where certain cultivars are in cultivation for a long time. Greater caution needs to be taken with regard to introduction of cultivars from one country to another and from one agroclimatic zone to another even within a country since some pathogens are known to be virulent under certain environment. Screening of cultivars under different agroclimatic zones has shown that while in certain cultivars the genotype x environment interaction is very minimal, it is not so in others for the same character. The use of genetic markers in mango improvement is increasingly appreciated and using these techniques parentages of cultivars of unknown parentages are being identified.