Breeding of Fruit and Plantation Crops 2 + 1

Poly clonal orchards

• More than one clone is planted and they are allowed to mate randomly. This is mainly done to collect the seeds. The purpose of this is to produce a quantity of seed of known parentage and proven performance. Therefore, the parents used in seed gardens are selected on the result of progeny trials. Having selected the parents, they are propagated vegetatively by rooted cuttings or by budding or grafting onto a seedling rootstock.
  


• The female parents should be self-incompatible, i.e. trees which will not set fruit with their own pollen, as all seed produced on these trees should arisen from pollen from another tree. The desired crosses can be ensured by hand-pollination or by proper design of the seed garden where natural pollination is relied on. With two self incompatible parents, all the pods will result from cross-pollination and can be used for seed, there being no apparent difference between a cross and it’s reciprocal.


• In such cases, equal numbers of each parent were planted, often in double rows of each clone. Where one parent is self-compatible, seed is gathered only from the self –incompatible parent and in such cases the pollen parent was planted in the ratio of one to five female parent trees. Another form is planting a series of self incompatible parents in such an order that a number of different crosses are produced and seed can be collected from all the trees.
  


• Garden with two self incompatible parents called biclonal orchard and with multiple self incompatible clones, poly clonal orchards. It is of course, practical to plant a small number of plants of several clones and obtain seed of known crosses by hand-pollination. (e.g. Cocoa and rubber)