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ICAR-Directorate of Cashew Research is the nodal agency for conducting cashew research and manages the largest field gene bank in India. Cashew is a perennial tree and needs more land and other resources to maintain accessions. Conservation through seeds is not feasible because of cross-pollination. Tissue culture efforts to regenerate plants from mature explants are not successful. Therefore, efficient management of the filed gene bank particularly utilization requires designation of the core collection representing the spectrum of diversity present in the entire collection. In this study, a relatively new technique, the advanced M strategy with heuristic approach was deployed to develop the core collection. Sixty-eight morphometric characters of 478 accessions were subjected to analysis resulting in the core collection of 49 accessions. Further, another core collection of same number was constituted by K-Means clustering to compare the efficiency of two approaches. The validation parameters like mean difference, variance difference, coincidence rate, variable rate and class coverage among others were employed for comparative analysis. The results of these parameters revealed that the core collection designated by heuristic approach was better able to efficiently represent and retain the diversity of the entire collection compared with the core identified by clustering approach. Future conservation and breeding efforts will be focused on establishing a separate block in the field gene bank having 49 accessions of cashew core collection.

An investigation was carried out for three consecutive years 2011-13 years to study the influence of Paclobutrazol (PBZ) on flowering, fruiting and yield of cashew cultivar ullal-3. The various doses of paclobutrazol i.e. 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 g a.i., per plant was applied as soil drench annually, biennially and once in three years in the month of October before vegetative flushing of plants. The application of paclobutrazol @ 2.0 g a.i per plant found effective in improving flowering and fruiting parameters of cashew. The sex ratio ranged from 0.17 to 0.27 percent in treated plants while in untreated plants it was 0.15 to 0.21 percent. The number of flower panicles per plant ranged from 53.5 to 68.4 in treated plants while in untreated plants it was 53.5 to 62.7. The length and width of flower panicles ranged from 11.6 to 17.3 cm and 16.5 to 23.3 cm respectively, in treated plants while, in untreated plants, 17.1 to 18.1 cm and 22.8 to 23.6 cm respectively. The PBZ treated plants recorded nut length of 3.0 to 3.3 mm, nut width of 2.4-2.5 mm, nut weight of 6.63 to 7.56 g and nut volume of 6.84-7.74 cc while in untreated plants nut length of 3.0 to 3.2 mm, nut width of 2.4-2.5 mm, nut weight of 7.02 to 7.36 g and nut volume of 7.25-7.64 cc respectively. The average yield of treated plants ranged from 0.76 kg to 1.13 g/plant while, in untreated plants nut yield of 0.67 to 0.73kg per plant.

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