Breeding of Fruit and Plantation Crops 2 + 1

Breeding objective in cashew

• High yield with bold nuts: Cashew being primarily export oriented crop, it is necessary to give utmost priority for developing varieties and hybrids with export grade kernels. Nuts should be big and plumpy to produce more of W-180 grades. Yield of more than 10 kg per tree per year.
• Fruit setting percentage in cashew: 1 to 18 %
• Dwarf and compact canopy: To facilitate high density planting.
• Short flowering phase: To reduce the chances of losing crop due to pest infestation and also to minimize the cost of collection of nuts.
• High sex ratio: Adequate care should be exercised in selecting the trees with high bisexual flowers. Recent studies have also emphasized the importance of staminate flowers to provide more efficient pollen so the trees with mixed phase and also high sex ratio are to be preferred as parents over types which have distinct male phase and hermaphrodite phase.
• Breeding for tea mosquito resistance: One of the production constraints in cashew is the severe incidence of tea mosquito bug in some areas. So production of varieties which show field tolerance to tea mosquito bug needs priority.
• High shelling percentage: Processing industries look forward for high recovery of cashew kernels. Currently, for release of any variety standards fixed stipulate that a minimum of 28 % shelling percentage should be recorded.
• Nutrient quality index: Develop varieties with high nutritive value. In cashew high protein (> 35 g protein, lysine > 50 micro gram per mg protein and < 14 g of sugar is suggested).Cashew kernel is good even compared to almond. It contains protein = 32 to 70 g and have more of lysine i.e., quality protein , Starch = 21 to 33 ,Lipids