CPCRI Kasaragod — ICAR–Central Plantation Crops Research Institute, Kudlu 671124: India's Nodal R&D Institute for Coconut, Arecanut and Cocoa, Lead Centre of the AICRP on Palms, Home of the Chowghat Orange Dwarf, Kalpa, Kera and Chandra Series Coconut Hybrids, the Root (Wilt) Disease Research Programme and the Nilgiri-Cocoa Package of Practices

The ICAR–Central Plantation Crops Research Institute (CPCRI), headquartered at Kudlu PO, Kasaragod 671124, Kerala, is the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)'s nodal institute for research on coconut (Cocos nucifera), arecanut (Areca catechu) and cocoa (Theobroma cacao). India is the world's largest producer of both coconut and arecanut, and CPCRI's varietal pipeline — the Chowghat Orange Dwarf (COD), West Coast Tall (WCT), Kera Sankara, Kalpa Pratibha, Kalparaksha and Chandra Sankara coconut lineage; the Mangala, Sumangala, Sreemangala, Mohitnagar and VTLAH-1/2 arecanut releases; the VTLCH-1/2/3/4 cocoa hybrids — plus the root (wilt) disease tolerance programme and the eriophyid-mite / red-palm-weevil IPM protocols are the research foundations on which India's plantation-crops economy runs.

Founded 11 January 1970 by merger of the Kasaragod and Vittal stations

CPCRI was created on 11 January 1970 by merging two older ICAR research stations into a single institute of national stature: the Central Coconut Research Station at Kasaragod, originally established in 1916 by the Madras Presidency and taken over by ICAR in 1948; and the Central Arecanut Research Station at Vittal in Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka, established in 1956. A satellite root-wilt disease research station had been running at Kayamkulam in central Kerala since 1947, and this too was folded into CPCRI at inception. CPCRI reports to ICAR under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India, and is the lead centre of the All India Coordinated Research Project on Palms (AICRP-Palms). Oil-palm research was carved out of CPCRI in 1995 with the creation of the sister ICAR institute IIOPR Pedavegi, which is why today's CPCRI mandate is confined to the three mandate crops of coconut, arecanut and cocoa.

Mandate and research divisions

CPCRI's mandate spans basic, strategic and applied research on its three mandate crops for all Indian plantation-crop agro-climates. Its research divisions are:

• Crop Improvement: conventional and molecular breeding, varietal evaluation and release of coconut, arecanut and cocoa varieties and hybrids through the AICRP-Palms coordinated-trial system; maintenance of the Indian National Coconut Gene Bank at Kasaragod with ~450 coconut accessions and the Vittal and Kidu arecanut-cocoa germplasm collections; biofortification for lauric-acid and medium-chain- triglyceride profile of copra oil.
• Crop Production: soil-test-based nutrient management, drip-fertigation, the coconut-based high-density multi-species cropping system (HDMSCS) that stacks banana, pepper, nutmeg, cocoa, pineapple, forage grasses and dairy animals under a coconut canopy to lift per-garden net income by 2–3×; areca-based mixed cropping with cocoa, pepper, cardamom and vanilla — see our Soil Health Card brief for the fertiliser-recommendation backbone.
• Crop Protection: integrated management of coconut root (wilt) disease, eriophyid mite (Aceria guerreronis), red palm weevil (Rhoynchophorus ferrugineus), rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes rhinoceros), black-headed caterpillar (Opisina arenosella), bud rot (Phytophthora palmivora), stem bleeding (Thielaviopsis paradoxa), coconut leaf-rot, Ganoderma wilt of arecanut, fruit-rot / koleroga (Phytophthora meadii), Vascular Streak Dieback (VSD) and black-pod of cocoa — see our integrated pest management and pest identification briefs.
• Physiology, Biochemistry and Post-Harvest: drought-tolerance physiology of coconut, in-situ copra drying, virgin coconut oil (VCO) processing, neera and coconut-sugar technologies, coconut-water pasteurisation, coir pith composting, cocoa-butter and cocoa-liquor processing, chali and kottapak arecanut processing.
• Social Sciences and Transfer of Technology: coconut-based farming-system economics, adoption and seed-replacement studies, Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO) training through the 10,000 FPO Scheme, and extension through the regional stations plus the Krishi Vigyan Kendra network.
• Agricultural Engineering: coconut-climbing devices, mechanised dehuskers, copra driers (solar and biomass), tender-coconut punching tools and small-scale neera-tapping equipment.

Location and regional stations

• Headquarters: Kudlu PO, Kasaragod 671124, Kerala — the original 1916 Central Coconut Research Station site, on the northern Kerala coast.
• CPCRI Regional Station, Kayamkulam, Alappuzha, Kerala: national lead centre for research on the coconut root (wilt) disease complex that has afflicted southern Kerala since 1882.
• CPCRI Regional Station, Vittal, Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka: the original 1956 Central Arecanut Research Station, still the national lead centre for arecanut breeding and management, and the home of the VTLAH and VTLCH hybrid programmes.
• CPCRI Research Centre, Mohitnagar, Jalpaiguri, West Bengal: for arecanut and areca-based cropping systems in the north-east and sub-Himalayan plains.
• CPCRI Research Centre, Kidu, Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka: the cocoa and areca-cocoa mixed-cropping station that anchors the central-and-south-Indian cocoa belt.
• AICRP-Palms partner centres: KAU Pilicode (Kerala), TNAU Aliyarnagar and Veppankulam (Tamil Nadu), ANGRAU Ambajipeta (Andhra Pradesh), OUAT Bhubaneswar (Odisha), BCKV Mondouri (West Bengal), AAU Jorhat (Assam), GAU Navsari (Gujarat) and SKUAST-K Srinagar (temperate zone) — jointly running the national coordinated-trial network for coconut, arecanut and cocoa variety release.

The coconut variety and hybrid pipeline

Through the AICRP on Palms coordinated-trial system, CPCRI and its partner centres have released over 30 improved coconut varieties and hybrids. The headline lineage is organised by parentage and purpose:

• Parent populations: West Coast Tall (WCT, the Indian west-coast workhorse), East Coast Tall (ECT), Chowghat Orange Dwarf (COD, the standard dwarf parent for most Indian coconut TxD hybrids), Chowghat Green Dwarf (CGD), Malayan Yellow Dwarf (MYD), Malayan Orange Dwarf (MOD), Gangabondam (GB) and Andaman Ordinary.
• Tall × Dwarf (TxD) and Dwarf × Tall (DxT) hybrids: Lakshaganga (LCT × GB), Keraganga (WCT × GB), Chandrasankara (COD × WCT), Kera Sankara (WCT × COD — the single most widely planted CPCRI hybrid), Chandralaksha (LCT × COD), Anandaganga — giving the earlier bearing and higher nut-count of the dwarfs with the stem-rigidity and copra-weight of the tall parents.
• Kalpa series: Kalpa Pratibha, Kalpa Mitra, Kalpa Dhenu (a tender-coconut selection), Kalpa Haritha, Kalpa Sankara, Kalpa Jyothi, Kalparaksha (field-tolerant to root-wilt), Kalpa Sree, Kalpavahini and Kalpatharu — the current- generation CPCRI releases that extend varietal choice across tender-nut, copra, neera and ball-copra markets.
• Tender-nut specialists: Chandra Laksha, Chowghat Orange Dwarf for the tender-coconut market, Kalpa Dhenu for the sweet-water niche.

The authoritative current list of notified varieties is maintained on cpcri.icar.gov.in and in the AICRP-Palms annual report; nursery-grade mother-palm standards and certified-planting-material supply flow through the Coconut Development Board (CDB), Kochi.

The arecanut and cocoa pipeline

On arecanut, CPCRI's Vittal and Mohitnagar stations have released: Mangala (VTL-3), Sumangala (VTL-11), Sreemangala (VTL-17), Mohitnagar, SAS-1, Swarnamangala, Thirthahalli local selections, and the hybrids VTLAH-1 (Mohitnagar × SAS-1) and VTLAH-2 (Hirehalli × Sumangala) — covering early-bearing, high-yielding and drought- tolerant niches for the areca gardens of Dakshina Kannada, Shivamogga, Chikkamagaluru, Uttara Kannada, Kerala, Assam and Meghalaya.

On cocoa, CPCRI through Vittal and Kidu has released the VTLCH series — VTLCH-1, VTLCH-2, VTLCH-3 and VTLCH-4 — hybrids tailored to the coconut-cocoa and areca-cocoa inter-cropping systems that convert the under-canopy of mature palm gardens into a second income source for growers. These hybrids are the technical backbone of the central-and-south-Indian cocoa belt that supplies Mondelez, Cadbury, Campco and the premium bean-to-bar craft chocolate segment.

Root (wilt) disease — the Kayamkulam story

Coconut root (wilt) disease is a chronic, slow-decline disease caused by a phytoplasma — a wall-less, phloem-restricted bacterial pathogen — transmitted by lace-bug and planthopper vectors. First reported from the erstwhile Travancore region in 1882, it has steadily spread through the eight southern districts of Kerala — Alappuzha, Kottayam, Pathanamthitta, Kollam, Ernakulam, Idukki, Thiruvananthapuram and parts of Thrissur — and into contiguous areas of Tamil Nadu. Affected palms show flaccidity and marginal yellowing of fronds, drooping of leaflets, nut-size reduction and a gradual 30–60% drop in copra yield over 15–25 years.

Because the pathogen is a phytoplasma, cultural eradication is largely ineffective, so CPCRI's strategy at Kayamkulam has four legs: (a) breeding for field tolerance — the Kalparaksha, Kalpa Sree and Kera Keralam releases carry productivity under high disease pressure; (b) vector management through botanical insecticides and farm-level sanitation; (c) nutrient-and-irrigation-based productivity recovery of symptomatic palms — the CPCRI Kayamkulam package of practices restores substantial yield on affected gardens; (d) molecular diagnostics using nested-PCR and real-time PCR to detect the phytoplasma in symptomless palms and in vector insects.

Eriophyid mite, red palm weevil and rhinoceros beetle

• Coconut eriophyid mite (Aceria guerreronis): a microscopic mite that colonises the meristematic tissue under the perianth of young coconuts, causing scarring, cracking and nut-size reduction. It entered India in late 1998through the southern tip of Kerala and spread rapidly through peninsular India within three years. CPCRI's management combines root-feeding or stem-injection of acaricides, botanical neem-oil-garlic emulsion sprays into the crown, and nutritional recovery with potassium and micronutrients.
• Red palm weevil (Rhoynchophorus ferrugineus): a lethal borer whose larvae tunnel through the palm stem. CPCRI protocols combine pheromone (ferrugineol) traps for mass trapping, crown-filling with sand plus Metarhizium or chemical insecticide, prophylactic leaf-axil treatment and strict crown-wound hygiene — crown wounds from careless climbing are the single most common entry point.
• Rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes rhinoceros): the adult bores into the spindle leaf. Management uses the Oryctes-rhabdovirus biocontrol first released by CPCRI, pheromone (oryctalure) trapping, aggressive breeding-site sanitation (destruction of decaying farmyard-manure heaps, compost pits and dead palm stumps where the grubs develop) and crown-filling.
• Coconut black-headed caterpillar (Opisina arenosella): periodic defoliator; the CPCRI protocol releases parasitoids Goniozus nephantidis, Brachymeria nosatoi and Bracon brevicornis from state biocontrol labs.
• Arecanut Ganoderma wilt and fruit-rot / koleroga: the CPCRI Vittal package combines pre-monsoon prophylactic Bordeaux mixture spray, improved drainage, resistant selections and rhizosphere Trichoderma augmentation.

Plantation crops in India's wider agricultural economy

India is the world's largest producer of both coconut and arecanut, and a growing cocoa producer in the central-and-south-Indian belt. Coconut: annual production of about 14,000–15,000 million nuts from ~2.2 million hectares, mainly in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and the north-eastern states — roughly a quarter of global coconut production in nut terms; the sector supports an estimated 12 million growers and allied workers across copra, coir, oil, neera and tender-coconut value chains. Arecanut: ~1.0–1.2 million tonnes from ~0.6 million hectares, with Karnataka, Kerala, Assam and Meghalaya as the main producers; India accounts for over half of global arecanut production. Cocoa: ~27,000 tonnes from ~1.1 lakh hectares, mainly intercropped under coconut and arecanut in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

CPCRI feeds this economy with the AICRP-Palms varietal pipeline, the root-wilt tolerance programme and the eriophyid-mite / red-palm-weevil IPM protocols, and the coconut-based farming-system model. CPCRI interfaces with the National Mission on Edible Oils — Oil Palm (NMEO-OP) ecosystem on the fourth palm whose research is now anchored at the sister ICAR institute IIOPR Pedavegi, with the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH) and the National Horticulture Board (NHB) for area expansion and post-harvest infrastructure, with APEDA for value-added coconut and cocoa exports, with PMFBY for crop insurance (coconut and arecanut are notified plantation crops in eligible states), with the Krishi Vigyan Kendra network for on-farm training and front-line demonstrations, and with the 10,000 FPO Scheme for coconut and arecanut grower-FPO formation.

Primary sources

• cpcri.icar.gov.in — ICAR–Central Plantation Crops Research Institute official website: variety catalogue, AICRP-Palms annual report, package-of-practice bulletins.
• icar.org.in — Indian Council of Agricultural Research.
• coconutboard.gov.in — Coconut Development Board (CDB), Kochi — area, production and productivity statistics and certified-nursery accreditation.
• dasd.gov.in — Directorate of Arecanut and Spices Development (DASD), Calicut.
• dccd.gov.in — Directorate of Cashewnut and Cocoa Development (DCCD), Kochi.
• nhb.gov.in — National Horticulture Board plantation-crop statistics.
• apeda.gov.in — Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority — processed coconut and cocoa exports.

Frequently asked questions

Published 2026-10-07. This page is a research summary by AgriBot; always cross-check specific varietal, package-of-practice and advisory details with CPCRI Kasaragod, the Coconut Development Board, the local KVK and your State Agriculture / Horticulture Department before field use.