Abstract

Research on Oil Seeds is a recent development in the department of Agriculture of Madras State, and has been in progress only for the Inst twenty-five years, but the results achieved in breeding, agronomy, plant protection and other aspects of their cultivation are quite substantial. Intensive selection and hybridisation work in groundnut, gingelly and castor has resulted in the evolution of a number of strains with high yields, high oil-content and other desirable agricultural and commercial qualities. Amongst these, four strains in groundnut, three in gingelly and four in castor, have established their superiority over the local cultivated varieties, In coconut, which is a perennial plant with a high percentage of cross pollination, selection based on the characters of mother palms, seed-nuts and seedling progenies is being carried out in the promising ecological types. Hybrid vigour as a means of improvement has also been utilized in coconut by crossing the 'tall' and the 'dwarf' types to produce progenies possessing the desirable features of either of the parents like earliness, yield, etc. On the agronomic side, a few problems connected with these crops have been investigated.

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