Did you know that your favorite mango or orange varieties are not grown by seed sowing? Most of our popular fruiting & flowering plants of desirable characters like color, texture, smell, taste, size, etc. are grown by artificial vegetative propagation method called as grafting.
• What is Grafting?
Grafting is a union of two related plants referred to as stock & scion. The Stock or a Rootstock is wild, natural, vigorous, healthy, disease-free, & the one with a well-developed rooting system. eg. Wild Mango. The Scion is a high-quality, superior variety that possesses commercially &/or aesthetically desirable characters. Eg. Alphonso mango.
Grafting is a union of scion stems over the stock plant. The graft is not a hybrid. Characters of stock & Scion are never mixed in flowers & fruits. The exhibited plant characters should always belong to Scion. Union of internal tissues called cambium in both plants is imperative for successful grafting; when such union happens the stock and scion grow together as a single entity. In an ideal graft, roots & central main stem belong to stock, whereas all the growing branches, leaves, flowers & fruits belong to the scion.
• Types of Grafting
Depending on size & position of scion stem & the type of cut is made on stock & scion; there are different types of grafting viz.
- Approach grafting: Allamanda sp.
- Side grafting: Roses.
- Splice grafting: Some cacti
- Saddle grafting: Rhododendron & Lilac.
- Flat grafting: All cacti
- Cleft grafting: Fruiting trees.
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• Advantages of Grafting
- Grafting is the fastest way of growing popular, desirable varieties of fruiting trees & flowering shrubs on a large scale. Buy fruiting tree seeds online.
- Many commercially valuable plants are difficult to grow by other propagation methods like cutting & layering, but they respond well to grafting.
- Scions are highly precious varieties, but the usually have poor rooting system, less vigor & weak defence against pathogens. All these flaws can be overcome by grafting them on the stock, which is usually a hardy, wild relative of a scion.
- Grafting is a way of cloning a scion variety to maintain the consistency of characters such as size, color, flavours, etc.
- With gardener’s curiosity, multiple varieties of different scions can be grafted on single stock plant; trees can be given ornamental shapes, etc.
Examples of Grafting Plants
♦ Fruiting trees: Mango, Guava, Chikoo varieties.
♦ Flowering shrubs: Hibiscus, Roses, Bougainvillea varieties. Buy flowering plants online in India.
