Type I (strict allogamy): Short female phase with no overlap with the male phase of the same inflorescence or with the male phase of the following inflorescence. Examples are some populations of the West African tall cultivar.
Type II (indirect partial autogamy): Short female phase with no overlap with the male phase of the same inflorescence but with considerable or total overlap with the male phase of the following inflorescence. Examples are the cultivars Rennell Island Tall, Malayan Tall, Vanuatu Tall.
Type III (direct autogamy): Long female phase completely overlapping with the male phase of the same inflorescence, with or without overlapping with the male phase of the following inflorescence. Examples are the cultivars Malayan Yellow Dwarf, Sri Lanka Green Dwarf and Cameroon Red Dwarf.
Type IV (semi direct autogamy): Short female phase partially overlapping with the male phase of the same inflorescence and with that of the following inflorescence. Examples are the Brazil Green Dwarf and many dwarf x tall hybrids.
Coconuts are conserved ex situ in field genebanks, but are propagated from seed. There should be at least 45 palms per dwarf accession and 90 palms per tall accession and they must have been generated from at least 10 parent palms for dwarf accessions and 40 parent palms for tall accessions. Accessions are generally planted close to each other and surrounded by palms of many varieties.
The following regeneration guidelines are based mainly on the manual prepared by Santos et al. (1996)