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Fiji Dwarf has emerged as the
best choice for a Florida landscape coconut palm, especially for its resistance
to lethal yellowing disease. Click the image for more information about
it. |
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Fiji Dwarf Coconut is One Tough Nut
By Alfredo
Flores May 29, 2008
A coconut improvement program involving Agricultural Research Service
(ARS) scientists in Miami, Fla., has
focused on the very durable "Fiji Dwarf" variety to combat a shortage of
coconut germplasm in the Florida landscape trade. Valued for their fruit and
processing by-products, these trees are also in high demand as a signature
landscape element.
But in the 1970s, the lethal yellowing (LY) phytoplasma began
attacking the South Florida coconut canopy and had destroyed about 100,000
coconut palms by 1983. As a result, Florida's Division of Forestry initiated a
coconut-breeding program at the ARS Subtropical Horticulture Research Station
(SHRS) in
Miami.
There, strategies for managing LY focused on replacing tall,
disease-susceptible varieties with resistant, dwarf types. Although state
funding for the LY breeding and disease-management program ended in the 1980s,
the SHRS coconut germplasm collection was maintained and eventually
incorporated into the National Plant
Germplasm System.
ARS research geneticist
Alan
Meerow began to review the SHRS coconut germplasm after joining the staff
in 1999. Fiji Dwarf (also known as Niu Leka) emerged as the prized jewel among
varieties because of its heavy, dense crown of short, dark leavesfeatures
especially sought by ornamental growers, landscapers and gardeners. Although it
has variable LY resistance in Florida, it is free of nutritional deficiencies
that plague most other coconut varieties grown on Florida's relatively
infertile soils.
Since 2001, the SHRS researchers have been using molecular tools to
investigate the genetics of Fiji Dwarf and other varieties. Meerow and
horticulturalist
Tomas
Ayala-Silva want to know if it's possible to distinguish an LY-resistant
Fiji Dwarf genotype.
So far, data show that Fiji Dwarf has the second-highest genetic
diversity among coconut varieties, after the tall varieties such as the "Panama
Tall," and the largest number of unique variations, or alleles, of any cultivar
group within the study. In the past six years, not a single Fiji Dwarf has died
of LY at the SHRS. ARS scientists suspect that the surviving Fiji Dwarf palms
at their location may be resistant to LY. Meerow and Silva continue to work on
this variety with the tropical landscape horticulture industry in mind.
Read
more about the research in the May/June 2008 issue of Agricultural
Research magazine.
ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.