Morphometric Characterization of Coconut Germplasm

Though I was a student of Masters Program under the Department of Horticulture my close associations come up with the coconut palm during the research work. At present Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) has developed only two coconut variety. The yield of nuts per palm is very low on an average 21 nuts per year. Bangladesh produces about 100 million nuts annually weighing about 90000 t over 30000 ha of land. Although Bangladesh has great demand of fresh fruit and tender nut for drink purposes and also in oil mills. Collection conservation and evaluation of germplasm offer an opportunity for exploiting advantages of natural diversity for crop improvement. My witness was to initiate documenting the genetic diversity of coconut germplasm conserved at BARI. This book might serve both the students and plant breeder being more potential in the area of coconut variety improvement program. As the readers mostly Bangladeshis will bale to know about the diversification of coconut germplasm collected from different regions of Bangladesh for selecting highly diversified coconut germplasm for cultivation and breeding purposes.