Breeding for resistance/tolerance to root (wilt) disease
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Date
2007-02-08
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Abstract
Root wilt is a serious disease of coconut in Kerala. The disease affects 16 million palms and cause an annual loss of 968 million nuts. Involvement of phytoplasma in the etiology of this disease has been established. Breeding for evolving root (wilt) resistant varieties - being the lasting solution for the disease is implemented since 1987. In the heavily diseased tracts, some high yielding west coast tall and chowgate green dwarf palms were found to be resistant and serologically negative under field conditions. Studies indicated that CGD palms were having higher level of resistance to the disease compared to that of other varieties. It has also been reported that CDO X WCT hybrids gave higher yield in spite of contracting the disease. Based on these,observations, the following crosses are made - WCT X WCT (inter-se), WCT (self), WCT X CGD, CGD X WCT, CGD (self/inter-se), CDO (self/inter-se). The present crossing programme includes 63 WCT, 97 CGD and 4 CDO palms in the farmers plots.The 2725 progenies were under planted among heavily infested palms for evaluating their resistance and use them as future mother palms. In the seventh year of planting, WCT (open pollinated) seedlings showed 60%disease incidence where as WCT (self) and WCT (inter-se) showed 45% disease incidence and only 31% in CGD X WCT. Four seed gardens have been established by planting 3371 artificially pollinated seedlings.
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Keywords
breeding, root (wilt) disease-resistance, root (wilt) disease-tolerance, coconut disease
Citation
Plantation Crops Research Development in the New Millenium, CPCRI, Kasaragod 2002 p-67-71