ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines and explores this age-old practice of maintaining multiple varieties in an orchard and examines whether this practice contributes to mango varietal diversity. Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh is one of the major commercial mango production areas in India. Despite increasing commercialization and the establishment of mango pulp processing industries, many farmers in Chittoor maintain multivarietal orchards. In addition to commercial varieties, most of the orchards surveyed showed that farmers grew indigenous seedling types. During the participatory rural appraisal (PRA), Four Cell Analysis (FCA) and baseline survey, researchers observed that Chittoor farmers have increasingly adopted the practice of keeping multiple varieties of mango in current and new commercial and semi-commercial orchards and home gardens. Many multivarietal orchards maintain a composition of one or two trees of traditional types mostly used for different home consumption and food culture uses: sucking, pickling or table varieties such as Atimadhuram.
