I've tried growing mangos indoors from the seed I got out of a grocery store mango a couple of times. Each time, the seed germinated well and the plant grew nicely for the first few months. But then the plant started to get sick. The leaves turned crispy and dropped off and some black spots appeared on the stem. The terminal bud quit producing new leaves. Eventually, the whole plant died.

I also started a few coffee plants from seed (actually, right from the 'berries' that I got from a tree). Each of them also grew decently for the first while but then the leaves started to turn brown (starting at the edges and progressing inward) and fall off. I managed to nurse the plants along for a few years but they never grew very big and only managed to keep 6 or so partially green leaves on at a time before they too fell off. I built a miniature 'greenhouse' for them in an attempt to better control humidity and temperature but that didn't help much. After 3 years, the last surviving plant was only about 8 inches tall and had just started to grow a couple of lateral branches. However, it too eventually died.

I suspect that my mango and coffee plants had some sort of disease. I'm not sure whether both had the same disease or not. I've looked for fungicides but all I could find in the local greenhouses was wettable sulfur. I also tried some weak solutions of bluestone (copper(II)sulfate) and lime. I'm not an organic grower so I would be willing to use a stronger chemical if I could find one. Does anyone have any ideas what my plants may have had and what I could do to prevent/cure it the next time I try growing mango or coffee?

Hi,
I do not know why all the people in this forum like to grow plants using seeds, usually from my experience, only vegetables are easy to grow using seeds, but when it comes to fruit trees, it is better to plant small plants or stems that are already propagated in an equipped nursery, because most of the fruit trees are usually grafted to a special rootstock, this rootstock have resistance to certain root diseases. From a local certified nursery, try to get small plants (or small trees: ready to be transplanted). They will be grafted and virus free, that is the characteristics of a certified plants.

About your trees grown, did you examine the roots when the plants died, because fruit trees when planted by seeds (without knowing the characteristics of the seed, and where it is adapted to grow, kind of soil, or whether), because all these should be seriously taken into consideration. For example, most grapes, citrus and other fruit trees should be grafted on a special type of a rootstock in order to be overcome root problems. Because, roots that are susceptible to disease problems can not survive, and will sooner or later die.

I know that mango trees should be grafted. Why grafted? Suppose you have variety X, and Y, X is a mango tree that produces big nice fruits, but it has weakness in the roots and is susceptible to phytophtera, while Y is a mango type that produces small unmarketable fruits, but it has very strong roots that can resist many roots diseases. What is usually done, is grafting X on Y, as a result you get a plant the produce well, and that have resistance to certain diseases.

Bye.

---

bob

I grew the mango and coffee from seed because I was curious as to whether or not I could. So I tried it :) I got the mango seed out of a mango from the grocery store. The coffee berries came from a tree in a university greenhouse that my botany class looked at when learning about world crops. I really doubt than any nursery or greenhouse around here would have many tropical plants - I don't live near any major cities and I'm in zone 2. As I'm in Canada, it would be pretty difficult to get plants shipped in from another country - thus the majority of my tropical plants are started from seed or from whatever vegetative material I can find in the grocery store. I know that for some plants I won't get the exact same fruit characteristics from a seed as I would from a cutting, but the foliage is still nice :)

I did examine the roots of the plants. They all seemed to have healthy root systems - lots of healthy white roots. The coffee plants did have some kind of off-white moldy looking fungus growing where the soil met the pot. I'm not sure what that was, but I've seen it on the soil of some other plants - lemon if I remember correctly - and it didn't seem to harm them. I wash all of my pots in very hot water before I reuse them though, just to be on the safe side. Whatever the plants had, it seemed that the disease(s) attacked the leaves of the plants. The leaves didn't appear wilted or nutrient deficient as they might if the roots weren't able to feed them. Instead, it looked like something was starting at the leaves and killing the plant from there. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos, although I can try growing the next mango seed I come across and see if the same thing happens :)

It is better if you wash them with a 2 % solution of Clorox. This will make sure that you have killed all the fungus spores or material remaining on the sides of the pot. I am not sure that the leaves of the mangoes will be infected with fungus, unless they are humid all the tie with high temp around them, which is not the case. May be it would better to take the life showing the symptoms of the unknown disease to the lab and test it.

But if we have to analyze, then the disease is one of these, fungus, insect, or virus.
Usually virus is transmitted by insects. But I think in Canada, in low temp the work or the activity of the insects in negligible or very week, thus not transmitting a virus.
May be mites, and I think it would be an important factor in killing the small plants. Try to spray micronized sulfur (incase organic or IPM), or abamectin, or Bromopropulate, or cyhexatin, these chemicals will work on mites.

---

bob

I have an allergy to bleach fumes so unfortunately I can't use it for disinfecting. I have to use alcohol and/or temperature extremes when I need to disinfect something.

The plant would rarely if ever have been in a hot and humid environment - usually when it is hot here it is also dry, and we never have more than a couple of hot sticky days at a time. We do have lots of insects in the summer, but being so far from where mango or coffee would actually be grown outdoors, I think that you are probably right that it would be pretty unlikely that they would carry a disease for one of those plants. I take care of mites using insecticidal soap. I did find that the mango had a tendency to attract mealy bugs, which may have contributed to its' demise. But I never did see much insect life on the coffee.

Someone else had once suggested that perhaps the problem was anthracnose. Unfortunately, plant pathology isn't my strong point - especially when it comes to tropicals - so I'm not quite sure what the symptoms of that would look like.

Anthracnose will hit on the fruits usually, not on the leaves. I think it is the temp. you have to maintain your plants in a small greenhouse, where the temp should not decrease to lower than 18 degrees Celsius at night.

---

bob

I built a mini greenhouse around the coffee. It would be very unusual for the temperature in my house to drop below 18C, and I never had the coffee outdoors, nor did I have it near a window like my banana plant. I read that coffee likes partial shade / dappled sunlight so I had some other plants between it and the window some of the time and had it under grow lights at other times.

i agree with ibrahim;...... tropical fruit are tricky. most that are produced for grocery stores are grown on roots that are not thier own. therefore,.... if you propogate from the seed, you are growing a plant whose roots are not the strongest,..... not the roots on which the fruit was grown. Hence, under less than ideal condotions, the seedling fails. perhaps look for a rooted seedling or cutting grown on it's own roots. this may help the vigor of your plant

---

Cathy

Root stock is very important when you want to start a small fruit plant, try to identify the ecosystem, and search for the best rootstock that suits the climatic, soil, diseases present in your area, all the ecosystem analysis should be done, this will help.

---

bob