Role of grafting in vegetable crops: A review

Abstract

Grafting is a process in which two living parts are joining together to grow as a one and the method used to improve crop production. To overcome fusarium wilt, the first grafted vegetable seedlings used were for watermelon plants grafted on bottle guard. Since then this technology is being widely adopted in vegetable crops. Now a day’s mostly watermelon, cucumber and various solanaceous crops are grafted before transplanting in the field. The use of grafting is increasing day by day due to its ability to provide tolerance to biotic stress such as soil borne pathogen, and to abiotic stresses such as cold, salinity, drought and heavy metal toxicity. For getting higher production mainly female plant were grafted on male plant. It was seen that more than 22 rootstocks of tomato, chilli, brinjal and cucurbits are used for bringing resistant from bacterial wilt and nematodes have been identified till now but still the interactions between rootstock/scion are unrevealed which results in loss of fruit quality, loss in production, shorter post harvesting time become shorter, and incompatibility between rootstock and scion are seen mostly. The selection of rootstock and scion cultivars must be done carefully so to avoid any loss.