The tamarind tree has gained great socio-economic significance in a large part of the globe. It yields a large number of economic products from the fruit pulp and the seed, besides the usage of almost all its plant parts either as timber, fuel, vegetable or medicine. Introduced into the Indian sub-continent during pre-historic days, a wide genetic diversity of tamarind is found in India. The paper provides information on the diversity regions, extent of variability with respect to growth and fruit characters, germplasm holdings, evaluation and selection of genotypes, etc. A scheme of classification of tamarind types based on fruit characters and ideotype description to aim at genetic improvement for commercial exploitation have been suggested.
Diversity, Genetic Resource, Germplasm, Tamarind
