Chandan:
That is a great achievement, I would say. Please do
publish it in some magazine here and specaially in Assam with some sketches and
pictures so that people would know and may practise the same May be your
hybrid variety will not suffer from kerwn. The process of creating hybrid fruits seems to be
exciting although I am absolutely novice in this field. I definitely
would like to have seeds of this new variety of Kerela. Deep fried kerela
with white rice and chilli is one of my favorite Assamese dish
for Sunday lunch.
I am sure you
can do it with other Assamese fruits. As I told you
before, I have successfully planted an Assamese Bogori Gos (straight
from Jorhat) in our house in Katy, Texas. The good news is that it survived the
frost second year in a row. This year the tree produced enough
khar-khwa Bogoris for Ajanta to make couple of bottles of Bogori
Asar which we are enjoying sparingly like bapoti xahwn. May be you
can teach me how to make a hybrid Bogori out of this with some American
plum variety.
Thanks
Rajen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chan Mahanta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 12:33 PM
Subject: [Assam] For Gardeners
>
>
> I am a part-time khetiyok ( gardener), among other things :-).
>
> I am pleased to announce that I created a hybrid tita kerela, by
> cross breeding a variety of semi-wild kerela that I collected seeds
> of from a vine from the highlands of Jamaica in 2003 with the long
> Assamese variety. This Jamaican variety kerela ( momordica--bitter
> gourd) fruit is really tiny, about 1" in diameter and about 2" to
> 2.5" long, with dainty ( about 3" diameter) leaves. The fruits are so
> small that they are not useful for eating. The seeds are black,
> about 1/4" long X 1/8" wide. I was told by someone that it is seen in
> Florida also, growing wild.
>
> Just out of curiosity, I pollinated an Assamese kerela female flower
> with a male Jamaican pollen, and vice versa. One did not work, but
> the other did; except I was not careful about recording which hybrid
> fruited, and don't know the exact mix.
>
> Anyway, I grew a new hybrid plant this spring from the harvested
> seeds. At first, the resulting plant did not indicate any conspicuous
> characteristic. But soon I began to notice that it is an amazingly
> prolific plant, growing like crazy. You can almost see it growing
> :-). Soon a very robust and wildly growing vine took over the trellis
> and spread all over nearby ground, tomato plants and and overhead
> trellis that I built for 'laos' ( gourds) producing lots and lots of
> mid-sized ( 1.5" dia X 3" to 4" long), pale green ( more white than
> green) hybrid fruits. In fact we have so many fruits, I stopped
> picking them, and they are ripening and cracking up like blood red
> flowers with yellow petals.
>
> The taste is not extremely bitter, like some of our Assamese little
> kerela varieties. You can say it is of medium bitterness.
>
> My guess is that it MIGHT become a good garden vegetable for amateur
> urban gardeners as well as rural khetiyoks in Assam, because the
> plant is so robust and prolific. It can also become a beautiful
> screening/landscaping plant at verandas as well as against ugly ,
> blank compound walls, because it grows so fast. The flowers are
> mildly fragrant,like all kerela plants. But since there are so many
> flowers, the pleasant aroma could be smelled from a slight distance.
> That makes me think, it could be a fine urban landscape plant in warm
> humid areas.
>
> If anyone wants seeds to try let me know. I will be pleased to share some.
>
> Iti bineet,
>
> sondon kerela-seed mohonto :-)
> ( With apologies to Johnny Appleseed)
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