Abstract

West Garo Hills is not a traditional mango growing region although the agro climatic conditions are conducive for its cultivation. Some local varieties are seen growing in the region which are not qualitatively at par with the commercial varieties grown in other parts of India. Reports on performance of different commercial varieties of mango in this region are negligible. Therefore, considering the nutritional value and export potential of mango fruit and suitability of the region for mango cultivation, an experiment was conducted during 2016-19 to evaluate the performance of three mango varieties Amrapali, Dashehari and Kesar in West Garo Hills of Meghalaya. Morphological characters of tree, leaf, inflorescence and fruits, bio-chemical composition of fruits and yield were recorded. Among the three varieties studied under West Garo Hills condition, variety Amrapali showed the most vigorous growth in terms of tree height, girth and spread (East-West and North-South directions) by registering the highest percent of increase after 1 year, 2 years and 3 years of start of experiment. The pooled values of 2 years revealed the highest leaf area (77.20 cm2), highest yield per tree (21.69 kg/tree), highest yield per hectare (8.69 MT/ha), with fruits of highest vitamin C content (33.62mg/100g pulp), and highest sugars (total sugar of 8.95%, reducing sugar of 3.62% and non-reducing sugar of 5.07%) in variety Amrapali. Variety Kesar produced fruits with highest fruit weight (224.30g), pulp weight (169.34g), pulp:stone ratio (5.95) and pulp% (75.40%), while variety Dashehari produced fruits with highest TSS:acid ratio of 47.99 closely followed by variety Kesar (44.49) and variety Amrapali (42.73).