Origin of mango cultivation
The cultivation of mango is currently recognized as one of the 3 or 4 finest tropical fruits. It has been under cultivation since prehistoric times. The Holy Scriptures in Sánscrito, the legends and the Hindu folklore 2,000 years BC. they refer to it as of ancient origin, even since then. The mango tree has been the object of great veneration in India and its fruits constitute an article esteemed as edible through the ages. Apparently it originates from northwest India and northern Burma on the slopes of the Himalayas and possibly also from Ceylon.
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Mango has been distributed throughout Southeast Asia and the Malay Archipelago since ancient times. It has been described in the Chinese literature of the 7th century as a fruit crop well known in the warmest parts of China and Indochina. The early prominence of the mango in its native land comes to light because of the fact that Akbar, the great Moguel of India from the 16th century, had a garden containing 100,000 mango trees.
The western world related to the mango and started its current worldwide distribution with the opening, by the Portuguese, of the maritime routes towards Lejano Oriente, at the beginning of the 16th century. It was also taken from Indochina to the island of Mindanao and to Sulus for the 13th century, not until the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century that the Spanish travelers took the fruit from India to Manila, in Luzón.
Portuguese in Goa
Before long, the Portuguese in Goa, near Bombay, transported mango fruit to the south of Africa, from there to Brazil, around the 16th century and some 40 years later to the island of Barbados.
In the same way, the Spanish introduced this crop to their tropical colonies of the American Continent, by means of the traffic between the Philippines and the west coast of Mexico for the 15th and 16th centuries. Jamaica imported its first mangoes from Barbados in 1782 and the other islands of the West Indies, at the beginning of the 17th century. The mangos were taken from Mexico to Hawaii, in 1809, and to Californi around 1880, while the first permanent plantation in Florida dates from 1861.
botanical description
Mango Tree1-Trunk.
The typical mango constitutes a tree of medium size, 10-30 m high. The trunk is more or less straight, cylindrical and 75-100 cm in diameter, whose crust is gray in color – coffee has longitudinal cracks or shallow reticulated grooves that sometimes contain droplets of resin.
2- Cup.
The corona is dense and broadly oval or globular. The branches are thick and robust, often with alternating groups of long and short strands that correspond to the beginning and to the posterior parts of each successive renewal or growth; they are rounded, smooth, yellowish green in color and opaque when young; la hoja scars are just prominent
3- Leaves.
The leaves are alternate, irregularly spaced along the length of the branches, with a wide or short petiole, oblong-lanceolate, coriaceous, smooth on both surfaces, shiny dark green on the top, green–yellowish on the bottom, 10-40 cm long wide, 2-10 cm wide, and full with thin transparent margins, base water or sharp and somewhat abruptly reduced, apex acuminate.
Likewise, the leaves have visibly reticulate veins, with a robust and conspicuous median vein and 12-30 pairs of more or less prominent lateral veins; they emit a resinous odor when crushed; the petiole is rounded, slightly thickened at the base, smooth and 1.5-7.5 cm long. Young leaves are reddish-purple or bronze, later turning dark green.
4- Inflorescence.
The panicles are highly branched and terminal, pyramidal in appearance, 6-40 cm long, 3-25 cm in diameter; archive pink or purple, sometimes yellowish-green, rounded, and densely pubescent or hairy white; the bracts are oblong–lanceolate or ovate–oblong, intensely pubescent, wither and drop early, and 0.3-0.5 cm long.
5- Flowers.
The 4-5 part polygamous flowers are produced in the dense cymes or last twigs of the inflorescence and are yellowish-green, 0.2-0.4 cm long and 0.5-0, 7 cm in diameter when extended.
The sepals are free, deciduous, ovate or ovate-oblong, somewhat acute or obtuse, yellowish-green or light yellow in color, concave, densely covered (especially on the outside) with conspicuous short hairs, 0.2-0 .3 cm long and 0.1-0.15 cm wide.
The petals remain free from the disc and are deciduous, ovoid or ovoid-oblong, spreading with curved tips, finely pubescent or smooth, yellowish-white in colour with purple veins and three or five ocher grooves, which later take on the colour orange; they are 0.3-0.5 cm long and 0.12-0.15 cm wide; old petals sometimes have pink margins, disc large, conspicuously four or five-lobed above petal base, ridged, spongy, lemon-coloured, later becoming translucent white, much broader during anthesis than the ovary and 0.1-0.15 cm tall.
the stamens
They can be from four to five, unequal in length, only one or two of them being fertile, the rest being reduced to tiny staminodes, purple or yellowish-white in colour; the perfect stamens are 0.2-0.3 cm long, with the anthers ovoid–oblong, obtuse, smooth.
The staminate flowers lack a rudimentary ovary and their stamens are central, closely joined by the disk. The ovary in the perfect flower is conspicuous, globose, lemon or yellowish in colour and 0.2-0.15 cm in diameter; the style is lateral, curved upwards, smooth and 0.15-0.2 cm long; the stigma is small and terminal. Mango pollination is essentially entomophilous, the main pollinators being insects of the Diptera order.
Mango Seed6- Fruit.
It is a large fleshy drupe that can contain one or more embryos. Indian-type mangoes are monoembryonic and most commercial cultivars are derived from them. Polyembryonic shanks are generally used as patterns. It has an edible mesocarp of different thicknesses depending on the cultivars and the growing conditions.
Its weight varies from 150 g to 2 kg. Its shape is also variable but is generally ovoid-oblong, noticeably flattened, rounded, or obtuse at both ends, 4-25 cm. long and 1.5-10 cm. thick. The color can be between green, yellow and different shades of pink, red and purple. The shell is thick, often with prominent white lenticels; the flesh is yellow or orange in colour, juicy and tasty.
7- Seed.
It is ovoid, oblong, and elongated, being covered by a thick and woody endocarp with a fibrous outer layer, which can extend into the meat.
Soil to grow mangoes
It can live well in different types of soil, as long as they are deep and have good drainage, the latter being a very important factor.
In lands where rational fertilization is carried out, depth is not so necessary; however, they should not be planted in soils less than 80 to 100 cm deep.
Light soils are generally recommended, where the large roots can penetrate and fix themselves to the ground.
The pH will be around 5.5-5.7; the soil having a silt-sandy or clay-sandy texture.
An analysis of a soil where mangos thrive very well gave the following result: lime (CaO) 1.2%, magnesium (MgO) 1.18%, potash (K2O) 2.73%, phosphoric anhydride (P2O5) 0, 15%, nitrogen 0.105%.
Irrigation of the mango crop
The water requirements depend on the type of climate of the area where the plantations are located.
If they are located in areas with alternating wet and dry seasons, optimal for mango cultivation, as in Sudan, vegetative growth takes place during the rainy season, and flowering and fruiting in the dry season. In this case, a small amount of water is enough.
In colder areas, such as Israel and the Canary Islands, there is only one warm season, in which fruiting and vegetative development take place at the same time. In this case, irrigation must be much more copious, but it will be taken into account that excess Moisture is detrimental to fruiting.
In general, it needs less water than avocado; The circumstance occurs that in lands where the availability of water is abundant, the tree vegetates very well, but does not bear fruit.
When the trees need the most water is in their first days of life, reaching approximately 16 to 20 liters per week per tree. This happens during the first two years and as long as the tree is in the field; it is not the same in the nursery, where its demands are lower.
Once the tree is rooted, it withstands drought very well; It thrives with a quarter of the water that the banana plant needs and can tolerate, depending on the type of soil, up to 400 milligrams of salt per liter of water.
To obtain the maximum yield from the tree, irrigation must be periodic (400m3/ha and month).
The most copious watering should be given when the buds are about to open, and up to several weeks after fruiting. While the fruit increases in size it should be watered once every fortnight and watering can be stopped as it approaches maturity.
The mango adapts very well to variable precipitation conditions:
It also tolerates drought, although physiologically this tolerance has been attributed to the possession of laticifers that allow the leaves to maintain their turgidity through an osmotic adjustment that avoids internal water deficits (Schaffers et al., 1994).
In calcareous soils, a period of continuous flooding that is not excessively long can be beneficial for mango, since it increases the availability in the soil of some microelements such as iron and manganese (Whiley and Schaffers, 1997).
Periods of water deficit benefit the phenological cycle of mango. In tropical areas, water stress is the main environmental factor responsible for floral induction. On the contrary, it occurs with the setting and the growth of the fruit, since drought is very detrimental since the size of the fruit decreases.
A good distribution of annual rainfall is considered more important than the amount of water, with the minimum annual rainfall of 700 mm being well distributed.
In Mexico, irrigation is applied in the Central Pacific region, mainly using flood irrigation, although some plantations have micro-sprinkler or drip irrigation.
Irrigation is applied during the dry season (October-May).
Irrigation starts after flowering and continues until harvest, with an interval between irrigations of 10-15 days in sandy soils and 18-25 days in clayey soils.
Climate – temperature
It is more susceptible to cold than the avocado and resists winds better than the latter. The mango thrives very well in a climate where the temperatures are as follows:
- Slightly cold winter (minimum temperature of 10ºC).
- Slightly warm spring (minimum temperature above 15ºC).
- Warm summer and autumn.
- Slight variations between day and night.
A well-developed tree can withstand temperatures of two degrees below zero, provided they do not last long. A young tree, from two to five years old, can perish at temperatures of zero and one degree Celsius.
Thus, for example, in the Canary Islands the optimal area for this crop is the South, prospering well in the North.
