[Goanet-News] GREEN THUMB: Mango mania ... going down centuries of history (by Miguel Braganza)

[Goanet News]

GREEN THUMB: Mango mania ... going down centuries of history

By Miguel Braganza
miguelbraganza at yahoo.co.in

Mango is decidedly the most popular fruit among the teeming
millions of people in the Orient, specially in the land of
its origin, the Indian sub-continent.

The popular myth is that the Portuguese brought mango to Goa.
The truth is that they only taught our forefathers the
technique of clonal multiplication by grafting so that
superior 'types' could be perpetuated as 'varieties' or as
'cultivars'.

          The cultivated varieties, or cultivars, may not be
          distinctly different botanically. The mango
          cultivars bear Goan names and surnames like Afonso,
          Colaco, Monserrate, Xavier and so on. Our surnames
          may have originated in Portugal, not the mango
          varieties!

The mango tree is a native of the Indo-Malayan region
[North-East India and the neighbouring countries of Myanmar,
Malaysia and Indonesia] according to Dr. S. K. Mukherjee. The
scientific name, Mangifera indica [literally meaning 'mango
yielding tree of India'] tells us about the origin of the
tree in no uncertain terms.

          The Portuguese word 'Manga' for mango is actually a
          corruption of the Malayalam word for the fruit
          'Manga'. Blame the name on Vasco da Gama's
          Kozhikode [Calicut's new name, resurrected from the
          archives] connection or the earlier Portuguese
          traders who may have been doing business in Indian
          spices with the Malayali Mopla seafarers in some
          Arabian haunt. That is the truth.

There are forty-one species of the genus Mangifera which have
edible fruits. Of these only three species ... M. indica, M.
sylvatica [of the forest] and M. zeylanica [of Sri Lanka] are
found in India. Only one species, M. indica, has all the
known commercial varieties of mango.

At the Konkan Fruit Fest held at Goa in mid-May 2008, Dr. S.
P. Singh, Horticultural Scientist of ICAR-Goa, displayed
fruits of Mangifera sylvatica that he found on a tree in
Siolim. That is a discovery. Perhaps, one will soon find a
few seedlings and grafts of this species in the mango block
at Ela Farm.

          Over the years we have learnt the ABC of mango
          varieties: Afonsa, Bemcurada, Colaco, deSouza,
          Elangovan, Fernandina, Gola, Hilario, Jehangir,
          Kensington, Langda, Malcurada, Neelum, Olour,
          Pairi, Rajapuri, Secretina, Temudo, Udgo,
          Vellaikolumban, Xavier, and Yerra Malgoa and Zill
          Irwin.

I do not know of varieties in I, Q and W, but they may exist,
too. There are many varieties for each alphabet in the
country that boasts of a thousand-plus varieties, India.

Langda is a variety named after 'Timur Lang' or 'Tamerlane',
the warrior-emperor who loved mangoes. Perhaps, 'Temuo' or
Chimut also has a similar origin. Manga Hilario is named
after the father of Raul Fernandes, the former Education
Minister of Goa, Daman & Diu in the 1970s.

          The earliest known technique of vegetative
          propagation was 'air-layering' or 'gootee', wherein
          a branch is induced to produce roots and is then
          separated as a new plant. This practice, perfected
          by the Moghuls to create the famous 'Lakh Bagh' at
          Dharbanga-Bihar during the time of Akbar
          [1556-1605], is no longer practiced in mango though
          it is still popular for easy-to-root citrus
          species.

The first grafting technique was the 'Approach Graftin' or
'Bhett kalam', where the seedling is raised in an earthen pot
and used for grafting on the tree. This laborious technique
was popular till the mid-1980s when 'Epicotyl grafting' or
'Stone grafting' began to replace it due to the convenience
and higher survival rates under coastal conditions. This will
remain the popular technique till some micro-propagation
technique for 'tissue culture' is developed.

Selection of 'Chance seedling' with superior fruit quality
was the method of obtaining new cultivars. Hilario, deSouza,
Cardozo Malcurada, etc are all chance seedlings that caught
the attention of the owner and were then propagated by
grafting.

That has been the story for the last 4000 odd years.

According to Dr. K. L. Chadha [Punjab Horticulture Journal,
1979], the first hybridization programme in mango was
initiated by Burns and Prayag in 1921 at Pune. Incidentally,
a Goan scientist, Dr. Caetano X. Furtado [who has a palm
species, Phoenix furtadonna, named in his honour] was also at
the Pune agriculture college during that period.

The earliest mango hybrids to be released were Mehmood Bahar
and Prava-Shankar, both with Bombai and Kalipaddy as their
parent plants. Released in the early 1940s, they did not
become popular in the India of the British Raj.

          At Agriculture Research Station [ARS] at Kodur in
          Andhra Pradesh, a hybrid of the regular bearer
          Neelam and the choice mango variety Baneshan
          [Banganpally] was made. The product, named
          Neeleshan, was the best hybrid mango variety
          according to Dr. K.C. Naik [1948], an authority on
          mango during that period.

The South Indian mango variety Neelam has since been one of
the parents of most of the hybrids like Neeluddin, Neeleshan,
Neelgoa, Mallika, Amrapally, Ratna and indirectly of its
hybrid, Sindhu.

However, Indian Institute for Horticulture Research-Bangalore
released Arka Aruna [H-10] and Arka Anmol [H-13] which are
reciprocal crosses of Alphonso with Baneshan. It was a happy
time doing research at IIHR under the guidance of Dr. M. D.
Subramanyam, the man who released these varieties, and Dr. M.
R. Dinesh who succeeded him as the head of the Fruits
Division and supported us in presenting the first Konkan
Fruit Fest in 2003 at Campal.

          Dr. Dinesh, continues in the footsteps of his Ph.D.
          guide, Dr. C. P. A. Iyer. He is doing research on a
          number of Goan mango varieties that I took to IIHR
          during my research there [1987-89]. Some of the
          grafts came from Dr. Oswald de Souza of Saligao, an
          ophthalmologist with a fruity vision who can drive
          people nuts about fruits!

Contact your nearest Zonal Agriculture Office [there is one
in every taluka town, except Vasco] or ICAR-Goa and book your
mango grafts now. Next week we will see how to plant them
with the onset of monsoons. (ENDS)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above article appeared in the May 25, 2008 edition of the
Herald, Goa

MIGUEL BRAGANZA is an agriculture officer, who took the
unusual step of quitting his government job and opting to be
a horticulture consultant. He is a plant lover and writes on
issues that are close to his heart, and otherwise contributes
positively to society. He has been president of the Botanical
Society of Goa and Editor of the tabloid, North Goa Plus.

He is known to many who studied, like him, at Britto's and
Xavier's in Mapusa and was in the scouting movement in the
'seventies. Miguel's weekly column, Green Thumb, in the
Herald, Goa can be found in cyberspace. He writes another
column called 'Konkan Curry' for the Gomantak Times, Goa.