Grafting
They provide more fruit per unit of land, of higher quality, and reduce the danger of accidents by harvest crews working on ladders.
In the commercial farming industry, consistency is maintained by grafting a scion with desired fruit traits onto a hardy stock.
Proper alignment and pressure encourages the tissues to join quickly, allowing nutrients and water to transfer from the stockroot to the scion.
Automation is particularly popular for seedling grafting in countries such as Japan and Korea where farming land is both limited and used intensively.
Tape around the top of the stock to hold the scion in place and cover with grafting wax or sealing compound.
The grafted point is then bound with tape and covered with a soft sealant to prevent dehydration and infection by germs.
The common variation is a whip and tongue graft, which is considered the most difficult to master but has the highest rate of success as it offers the most cambium contact between the scion and the stock.
(If the stock is a branch and not the main trunk of the rootstock then the cut surface should face outward from the centre of the tree.)
The scion end is shaped as a wedge, inserted, and wrapped with tape to the scaffolding branches to give it more strength.
A group of trees can share water and mineral nutrients via root grafts, which may be advantageous to weaker trees, and may also form a larger rootmass as an adaptation to promote fire resistance and regeneration as exemplified by the California black oak (Quercus kelloggii).
Many species of cactus can also produce graft chimeras under the right conditions although they are often created unintentionally and such results are often hard to replicate.
[17] White spruce can be grafted with consistent success by using 8–10 cm (3–4 in) scions of current growth on thrifty 4- to 5-year-old rootstock (Nienstaedt and Teich 1972).
[18] Before greenhouse grafting, rootstocks should be potted in late spring, allowed to make seasonal growth, then subjected to a period of chilling outdoors, or for about 8 weeks in a cool room at 2 °C (Nienstaedt 1966).
[19] A method of grafting white spruce of seed-bearing age during the time of seed harvest in the fall was developed by Nienstaedt et al.
The cultural regimes used to promote one additional growth cycle in one year involve manipulation of day length and the use of cold storage to satisfy chilling requirements.
In one of the first accelerated growth experiments, white spruce grafts made in January and February that would normally elongate shortly after grafting, set bud, and remain in that condition until the following spring, were refrigerated for 500, 1000, or 1500 hours beginning in mid-July, and a non-refrigerated control was held in the nursery.
[21] The refrigeration (cold treatment) phase was subsequently shown to be effective when applied 2 months earlier with proper handling and use of blackout curtains, which allows the second growth cycle to be completed in time to satisfy dormancy requirements before January (Greenwood et al.
For example, Leviticus 19:19 states "[the Hebrew people] shalt not sow their field with mingled seed..." (King James Bible).
In Romans 11, starting at verse 17, there is a discussion about the grafting of wild olive trees concerning the relationship between Jews and Gentiles.
[30] Additional evidence for grafting in China is found in Jia Sixie's 6th century CE agricultural treatise Qimin Yaoshu (Essential Skills for the Common People).
Nonetheless, given the sophistication of the methods discussed, and the long history of arboriculture in the region, grafting must have already been practiced for centuries by this time.
The book is called De Agri Cultura (On Farming Agriculture) and outlines several grafting methods.
Other authors in the region would write about grafting in the following years, however, the publications often featured fallacious scion-stock combinations.
Creating lavishly flourished gardens would be a common form of competition among medieval Islamic leaders at the time.
[29] After the fall of the Roman Empire, grafting kept being practiced in Christian monasteries and regained popular appeal among lay people during the Renaissance.
The invention of the printing press inspired a number of authors to publish books on gardening that included information on grafting.
While the book contains practical grafting techniques, some even still used today, it suffers from exaggerated claims of scion-stock compatibility typical of this period.
While grafting continued to grow in Europe during the eighteenth century, it was considered unnecessary in the United States as the produce from fruit trees was largely used either to make cider or feed hogs.
Thanks to the efforts of scientists such as C. V. Riley and J. E. Planchon, the culprit was identified to be phylloxera, an insect that infests the roots of vines and causes fungal infections.
Others, opposed to the idea, argued that American rootstocks would imbue the French grapes with an undesirable taste; they instead preferred to inject the soil with expensive pesticides.
