Coconut is propagated through seedlings raised from seed nuts collected from superior palms referred as mother palms. Select mother palms having the following characters:

• Regular bearing habit and yielding not less than 80 nuts per year.
• Age 20 years or more (5 years after reaching full bearing capacity). If the mother palms are the progeny of elite planting material and gives consistently higher yields for a period of not less than 6 years, seed nuts can be collected from such palms. There is no need for insisting 20 years as minimum age for mother palms in such conditions.
• More than 30 fully opened leaves with short strong petioles and wide leaf base firmly attached to the stem.
• Bearing at least 12 bunches of nuts with strong bunch stalks.
• Bearing nuts of medium size and oblong shape.
• Husked nuts should weigh not less than 600 g.
• Mean copra content of 150 g per nut or more.

Avoid palms which (i) have long, thin and pendulous inflorescence stalks (ii) produce long, narrow, small sized or barren nuts (iii) show shedding of immature nuts in large numbers and (iv) are grown under favorable environmental conditions.