Vegetable grafting for abiotic stress tolerance

Abstract

Due to limited availability of arable land, the high demand for offseason vegetables, vegetables are often cultivated under unfavourable conditions. These consist of salinity, water stress, alkalinity, heavy metals and excessive amounts of trace elements. Plants exposed to adverse chemical soil conditions which exhibit various physiological and biochemical disorders that cause stunted growth and severe yield loss. Grafting high yield scions onto resistant rootstocks has been a common practice to overcome such stresses to growth in the last four decades in both the Solanaceae and Cucurbitaceae (Schwarz et al. 2010) [21], to improve the sustainability and profitability of organic vegetables cultivation and to increase yield and fruit quality. A number of grafting techniques are employed in vegetable crops like cleft grafting, tongue grafting etc. For grafting in vegetables many new innovations are developed such as Grafting Robots, Micro-grafting etc. Cucurbits may be grafted onto pumpkin will provide some drought tolerance in sandy soil (AVRDC, 2013) [1]. Grafted vegetables have the potential to survive under abiotic stress. It is a rapid another means to the moderately slow breeding methodology. Grafting is an eco-friendly technology which promotes organic vegetable production which minimizes the excess use of chemicals and their toxic residues in vegetables and environmental pollution. Hence, it is suggested that, adoption of grafting to attain the low input sustainable horticulture in future.