Efforts to develop desease-resistant Areca palms moves ahead in India

The Central Plantation Crops Research Institute (CPCRI) has gathered inflorescence from disease-resistant areca nut palms in order to develop tissue-cultured disease-resistant plants as part of its ongoing effort to establish an areca nut plant variety resistant to Yellow Leaf Disease. On Friday, inflorescence was collected from three palms in the Lainkaje Prabhakara and Madhava Nadubetta areca nut plantations. CPCRI at Kasaragod, Kerala, plans to reproduce these palms by tissue-culture procedures and inter-crossing between two disease-free palms. It is the project's initial stage. The inflorescence was gathered by Senior Technical Assistant Muralikrishna and his colleagues, who then took them to the CPCRI laboratory in Kasaragod, he said. CPCRI gathers inflorescence from three species of palm cultivation in the villages of Sampaje and Chembu. CPCRI scientist Bhavishya found disease-resistant palms for sampling in the Sampaje and Chembu locations last month. After that, samples ...