Mango Breeding Support

The Mango Breeding Support project provided technical, research and development support to the Queensland-based, Australian Mango Breeding Program to develop and evaluate breeding systems and technologies that improve mango breeding efficiency. Adoption of efficient breeding support technologies will allow breeders to identify genes for desirable plant and fruit traits in parent varieties and incorporate those genes into new hybrid varieties more efficiently and rapidly. The project compared traditional hand pollination methods with DNA marker assisted selection (MAS) open-pollinated methods to identify paternity and found both systems had advantages. Marker assisted paternity identification was not practical in all cases and relied on a greater range of technical skills and resources being available to the breeder. It is expected that MAS will become even more efficient when markers are available for production and quality traits in addition to parental identification. Breeding for anthracnose resistance in mango is in its infancy. This project has identified several accessions in related Mangifera species with potential tolerance to postharvest anthracnose and tested the compatibility of these related species with the common mango and if the tolerance is transferable. The project investigated ways of determining a trees postharvest fruit disease resistance status in seedlings to avoid the up to 6 year wait for trees to crop. Identification of genes and gene markers for plant development, stress response, fruit colour and flavour development was another goal of this project. Twenty five new expressed sequence tag (EST) derived single sequence repeat (SSR) DNA markers were identified and tested across a diverse range of germplasm. These markers were shown to be useful in determining genetic relationships, exploring potential pedigrees and estimating the genetic background of cultivated accessions of M. indica. They are the first reported EST-SSR markers suitable to cross-amplify in five wild Mangifera species. The technologies that have been shown to be more efficient have been incorporated in to the Australian Mango Breeding Project. Other technologies being researched that are not yet fully developed to the stage where they can be adopted in a working breeding program are being progressed in other related research projects.