ABSTRACT
The average productivity of Citrus in India is substantially low in spite of the fact that Citrus ranks third amongst fruit crops grown in the country. For Citrus, the availability of high-quality planting material makes all the difference between achieving, or not, a productivity level equal to any of the frontline citrus-growing countries. Citrus can be propagated through seeds or through budded plants. Propagation of Nagpur mandarin in the Amravati area shifted from seedling to budded plants mainly following the appearance of Phytophthora root rot in the Azores Islands in 1842. During the baseline survey of the United Nations Environment Programme/ Global Environmental Facility (UNEP/GEF) project at the Amravati site in India, most of the farmers reported an absolute shortage of good-quality planting materials of Citrus. An awareness-raising programme for using genuine rootstock will help in scaling up and dissemination. Such an initiative has already been taken by the National Research Centre for Citrus (NRCC) Nagpur.
