CUBE ChatShaala Summary – 26th July 2025
Meeting Overview
In today’s session of CUBE ChatShaala, we explored two fascinating themes — the geographic timing of mango ripening across India and the use of Cardamine in floral dip transformation experiments.
Topic 1: Mango Season Across India in July
A key question drove our discussion:
“Is mango season still on across India in July?”
Participants presented observations from different parts of India:
-
Northern India (Bageshwar, Kanpur, Delhi):
Mangoes still available. -
Southern & Western India (Kozhikode, Trivandrum, Goa, Mumbai):
Mango season over by July.
Sailekshmi suggested that flowering begins early April, and ripening starts by May second week in Kerala, aligning with the observation that no fruits remain by end-July in southern India.
Latitude was noted as a key variable. Trivandrum (8.5°N) vs. Bageshwar (29°N) — more southern regions seem to experience earlier mango flowering and fruiting, likely ending by mid-monsoon.
Insight: This mapping shows a clear latitudinal gradient in mango availability, possibly tied to climatic and photoperiodic triggers of flowering. It challenges the assumption of a uniform mango season across India.
Topic 2: Floral Dip Transformation using Cardamine – Sneha’s Initiative
Sneha introduced the Cardamine plant project, reporting successful growth and progress toward using the floral dip method for genetic transformation — a widely used method in Arabidopsis thaliana that may now be applied in CUBE labs.
Sneha discussed her plan with a professor, and there is hope of generating the next generation of plants post-transformation.
The Cardamine plant appears healthy and responsive, making it a promising model system.
Why Cardamine?
It’s a small, quick-cycling plant like Arabidopsis — ideal for school labs aiming to work on gene function and inheritance studies.
Queries & Provocations for the Audience
Why are mangoes still available in Delhi but not in Trivandrum in July?
Can you trace this pattern to latitude, climate, or local mango varieties?
Could this become India’s next school-lab-friendly model plant?
Will flowering happens in April and fruits ripen in May in Kerala, what does this mean for climate change and crop planning?
What I Learned Personally Today
Today’s session highlighted how powerful citizen science data can be when mapped meaningfully — like mango ripening timelines across India. It taught me how something as simple as mango availability could reveal biogeographical trends and possibly reflect climate patterns.
On the molecular side, Sneha’s Cardamine initiative showed that even school students can engage with plant transformation experiments — a big step toward democratizing molecular biology!
Reference
@Arunan @Ayana_Sudheer @KiranKalakotiR @Chitralekha @2020ugchsncnseethala and others.