Nut Meg Planting and issues of male and female

[sanjayvp]

HI,

I have a farm in Malnad Hilly area. I am considering planting Nutmeg saplings in 2 Acres.

Nutmeg is a male or female fixed. So I had option of buying grafted material or regular seedling from nurseries. After some discussion with few people I understand that Grafted Material is not guaranteed and therefore I am buying regular seedlings.

Somebody has suggested that to manage the male and female issues should I plant 2 or three seedlings at a distance of 1 ft or so and when they flower cut most of the male trees and leave the female trees. Retain only few male trees for pollination. This way I am told that there is safety of good ratio of female to male trees.

Can I have some inputs on this strategy? Each seedling is coming very expensive and to plant 2 seedlings instead of 1 is a costly proposition. However if there is no alternative I am thinking of do so because after 5 years I dont want to have 50% male and 50% female.

Nursery people say that they can assure a large % of female plants..but I have read that there is no way to predict such % of gender of the plant.

Sanjay

 

[manojsinghchandel]

hi

hi


Use only top working male plants or budded or grafted plant.

Select grafted nutmeg plants for planting. If you are going for seedling materials the yield will be commenced 6 -7 years after planting. Moreover it is dioecious in nature there may be chance of occurrence of male trees. Hence select suitable graft materials for commercial planting.
Top working is recommended by selecting high yielding female scion materials. By adopting this technique all the male plants can be converted to female plants.

Regds