What was it all about?

Breeding mangoes is a long-term endeavour, typically taking up to 20 years. Since the industry relies on improved varieties to keep pace with demands, the 20-year breeding time frame needs to be shortened and efficiency of breeding improved.

One characteristic that the industry needs in new varieties of mangoes is resistance to the disease anthracnose which is currently managed by an integrated program including orchard hygiene, fungicides and nutrients. High quality genetic tolerance or resistance to anthracnose would provide an additional strategy for managing the disease and reduce pressure on chemical control.

This project, which ran from 2010 to 2013, provided technical support and research and development services to the Australian Mango Breeding Program. The program seeks to develop and evaluate breeding systems and technologies that improve the efficiency of mango breeding.

Efficient breeding support technologies will allow breeders to more quickly identify genes for desirable plant and fruit traits in parent varieties, and

Together the streams of research in this project advanced the ability of researchers to find new varieties of mango. The techniques they developed will allow breeders to identify genes for desirable traits much more quickly as well as incorporate those genes into new hybrid varieties more efficiently.

All of the developed techniques needed further research and development before being adopted by the breeding program.

Encouragingly, anthracnose resistance was successfully incorporated into new varieties.

Future research will build on these findings, assisted by a new collaborative partnership that the team developed with researchers in the US.