Coconut is an important oil seed and plantation crop in India. VHC 3, a T x D hybrid coconut has been evolved at Coconut Research Station (TNAU), Veppankulam by involving well adopted East Coat Tall as female parent and Malaysian Orange Dwarf as male parent. This new hybrid was released for cultivation in Tamil Nadu. VHC 3 recorded the mean nut yield of 156 nuts/palm with an increased nut yield of 10% over the existing hybrid VHC 2. Higher nut weight, kernel weight, copra weight and high oil content are the special feature of VHC 3. The nuts are medium size, bigger than VHC 2 with nut weight of 908g/nut. It has kernel weight of 297g/nut with copra outturn of 162g/nut. Due to high copra weight, VHC 3 recorded 3.65 tonnes of copra yield/ha with an increase of 19.7% over VHC 2. The copra yield of ruling tall variety ECT is only 1.75 tonnes/ha. The estimated oil yield of VHC 3 is 2.55 tonnes/ha as against 2.13 tonnes in VHC 2 and 1.13 tonnes in ECT. For one tonne of copra, VHC 3 required only 6180 nuts whereas VHC 2 required 6675 nuts and ECT required 7680 nuts. |