108 MANUAL OF TROPICAL AND SUBTROPICAL FRUITS 



found to differ from its parent much as does a seedling avocado 

 or a seedling peach. Usually the fruit is inferior, and the tree 

 may be quite different in its bearing habits. 



Dr. Bonavia, a medical officer in British India who did much 

 to stimulate interest in mango culture, at one time took up 

 the question of seedling mangos and wrote several articles 

 advocating their wholesale planting. He argued that not only 

 would many new varieties, some of them superior in quality, be 

 obtained in this way, but also earlier and later fruiting kinds, 

 and perhaps some suited to colder climates. 



Just what percentage of seedling mangos will produce good 

 fruit depends largely on their parentage. Seedlings of the fibrous 

 mangos of the West Indies are invariably poor, while those 

 from budded trees of such varieties as Alphonse and Pairi, 

 although in most instances inferior or rarely equal or superior 

 to the parent, are practically never so poor as the West Indian 

 seedlings. At the Saharanpur Botanic Gardens, in northern 

 India, some experiments were conducted between 1881 and 

 1893 to determine the average character of seedlings from stand- 

 ard grafted varieties. The results led to the conclusion that 

 seedlings of the Bombay mango were fairly certain to produce 

 fruit of good quality. An experimenter in Queensland, at about 

 the same time, reported having grown seedlings of Alphonse to 

 the fourth generation, all of which came true to the parent type. 



Experience in the United States has shown, however, that 

 degeneration is common. A number of seedlings of Mulgoba 

 have been grown in Florida, but very few have proved of good 

 quality. There is a tendency for the fruits to be more fibrous 

 than those of the parent. The whole question is probably one 

 of embryogeny. When monoembryonic seeds are planted, 

 the fruit is likely to be inferior to that of the parent, if the 

 latter was a choice variety; with poly embryonic seeds, even 

 though of fine sorts like the Manila, the trees produce fruit 

 closely resembling that of the parent. 



