Agri-scientists develop a new variety of Plum having uniform sweetness and stone-less characters

Updated on: Monday, April 01, 2013

The new fruit variety has been developed by a team of experts at Khalsa College Amritsar (KCA)'s Agriculture Department, which says it is fit to be cultivated in home gardens.

The experts who have developed the variety and will be known as `Manaka (name given for it being sweet like Resin), will be conserved in the College's field genetic bank.

The college had earlier developed `Alu-bukhara Amritsari after an intensive research and laboratory experiments for more than last three years.

The new variety has high nutritious contents, less sourness due to higher 1:14 ratio of sourness-sweetness.

Agriculture Department head JS Bal said the new variety also has free-stone character and the seed does not cling to the fruits and sweetness is uniform and the fruit is not sour at seed level unlike the traditional varieties.

He said their team has already submitted the details of fruit to Director, Horticulture, Punjab for taking it to farmers for large scale cultivation in the state.

The new variety is not only sweeter, it is bigger in size, have more juice contents and is stone free", said Bal, who has recently returned from US after presenting three research papers at 10th International Symposium on Plum and Prune Genetics, Breeding and Technology at University of California.

He said Khalsa College Amritsar has country's largest Plums Field Genes Bank.

Agri-scientists develop a new variety of Plum having uniform sweetness and stone-less characters

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