Performance of ‘Alphonso’ as a source of pollen for its hybrids ‘Sonpari’ and ‘Neelphonso’ as female parents in mango

Abstract

To incorporate the desirable traits of ‘Alphonso’ into its hybrids, a new breeding programme of back crossing the developed hybrids such as ‘Sonpari’ (‘Alphonso × Baneshan’) and ‘Neelphonso’ (‘Neelam × Alphonso’) with ‘Alphonso’ as pollen donor parent was undertaken to find out the compatibility of ‘Alphonso’ with its hybrids, ‘Sonpari’ and ‘Neelphonso’. The results revealed that fruit set was 88.91% in cross ‘Sonpari’ × ‘Alphonso’ and 78.43% in cross ‘Neelphonso’ × ‘Alphonso’. Fruit retention (%) was reduced drastically from fruit set stage till 14 days after pea stage (DAPS) but attained almost steady value from 35 DAPS onwards till harvest. The fruit retention (%) at harvest was higher in the crossed fruits of ‘Sonpari’ × ‘Alphonso’ (3.13%) compared to ‘Neelphonso’ × ‘Alphonso’ (0.94%). The crossed fruits of ‘Sonpari’ × ‘Alphonso’ produced fruit length of 13.4 cm, which was at par with Sonpari (13.5 cm), however lesser fruit width (9.9 cm) than Sonpari (11.1 cm). Crossed fruits of ‘Neelphonso’ × ‘Alphonso’ with fruit length (10.8 cm) and fruit width (5.7 cm) were higher than fruit length and width of Neelphonso. Similarly, fruit weight of hybrid fruits derived from crossed ‘Sonpari’ × ‘Alphonso’ (512.4 g) was significantly less than its female parent (527.2 g) but superior over Alphonso (331.4 g). Hybrids fruits of ‘Neelphonso’ × ‘Alphonso’ (235.2 g) was significantly higher than its female parent (216 g) but less than Alphonso. Based on this experiment, pollens of ‘Alphonso’ showed good compatibility with both ‘Sonpari’ and ‘Neelphonso’, which may be utilized as pollen parent for pollination in these two newly developed hybrid varieties for their further improvement.