Exploring Potentials of Longan (Dimocarpous longan Lour) in India
Kumar Rajesh, Kumar K. K. and Rai Mathura
Program and Abstracts, 3rd International Symposium on Longan, Lychee and Other Fruit Trees in Sapindaceae Family, August 25-29, 2008, Fuzhou, China. 132 pages.
2008
บทคัดย่อ
Exploring Potentials of Longan (Dimocarpous longan Lour) in India
Longan is an important member of the Sapindaceae and share many similarities in growth, fruiting habit, environmental requirements and cultivation aspects with litchi. Better adaptability, long & late harvesting season (after litchi), more yield and newer avenues for processing and value addition are added advantage to reveal the untapped potential of longan in India. Observations recorded at National Research Centre for Litchi, Bihar, India, on longan seedlings revealed high growth rate, profuse flowering, good bearing with god quality fruits maturing very late i.e. in August later than the litchi. Physicochemical characteristics like average fruit weight (17.14g/fruit), fruit diameter (7.16cm), aril weight (13.16g/fruit), seed weight (1.86g/), peel weight (1.98g/fruit), seed fruit volume ( cc), total soluble solids (TSS-18.20°Birx), acidity (0.22%) were comparable with litchi fruits in many aspects and organoleptic test also found acceptable to a great extent. The recently grown some seedling collections of longan which came into flowering and fruiting have shown the indication of its scope and potentialities in the litchi growing belts. Systematic and concerted efforts are being made to work on its developmental aspects both at pre- and post-harvest level to explore and exploit the prospects and potentials. This crop requires to pay attention for introduction of high yielding cultivars, proper R&D along with attempts for commercialization in the country