Abstract
In 1984, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) held a meeting “to review the ‘State of the Art’ of disease resistance breeding in tropical perennial crops”. Subsequently published as “Breeding for durable resistance in perennial crops”, the proceedings dealt with banana, cacao, coffee, oil palm, rubber and sugar cane, but omitted the coconut palm, Cocos nucifera L. [6]. This is surprising: firstly, because FAO had a general involvement in coconut genetic resources [5], and secondly because FAO specifically encouraged a coconut breeding program for lethal yellowing disease resistance in Jamaica [25]. That program achieved practical results [11] and, despite localised losses, has had long-lasting benefits [14]. In setting the record straight, it is theorised that resistance to lethal yellowing disease in coconut is durable and a possible mode of inheritance is proposed. The apparently lower resistance to lethal disease in Tanzania can also be accommodated by the theory.
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