​Advances in Breeding of Jackfruit Crop: A Review

Abstract

The improvement of jackfruit is required to make it amenable for intensive cultivation and make it suitable for a variety of value-added products. There is a significant variation for various traits such as plant phenology, leaf shape, leaf size, fruit shape, fruit size, number of fruits per plant, flake colour, number of flakes per fruit etc. The jackfruit crop has long juvenility, high clonal heterozygosity, recalcitrant type of seeds make it difficult to improvement of jackfruit varieties or hybrids, but on the other hand ease of vegetative propagation of hybrids or varieties is advantageous for the jackfruit breeder. The development of jackfruit is again based on the selection of clones especially for small-sized quality fruits, dwarf, less gum type, disease and pest resistance etc. The detailed knowledge on phenology, inheritance pattern and advanced techniques for hybrid/variety development will be useful to overcome the problems of jackfruit breeding viz fruit size, gummier fruits, susceptibility to disease and pests etc. The development of genetic markers has further reduced the uncertainty in the breeding of jackfruit and maintains the hybrid/varietal populations with desirable characteristics.