Interspecific grafting compatibility studies between tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) grafted on eggplant (Solanum melongena) and its wild relatives

Abstract

Tomato grafting has proven to overcome the biotic and abiotic stresses as well as improve growth, yield, fruit quality. However, in India the graft compatibility between eggplant rootstocks and tomato varieties has not been explored extensively. The total 18 grafting combinations were developed by using three different (including two breeding lines) varieties of tomato as a scion and varieties of brinjal including two wild species i.e., ST05 and SG06. Tomato var. EC97, EC98 and DOrg and Brinjal varieties and its wild species i.e., SM01, SM02, SM03, SM04, ST05 and SG06 were used as root stock for this study. The experiment was laid out Randomized Block Design (RBD) with 18 treatments and 3 replications and data were analyzed statistically. The results revealed that the plants are compatible with the grafting through cleft grafting method viz., graft success rate (95.71%), days taken to sprouting (10.60 days), number of leaves (27.12), plant height (32.99 cm), stem diameter (0.45 cm), root length (21.59 cm), root fresh weight (16.23 g) and root dry weight (10.51 g) for the graft combination SM01 x DOrg. The 2^nd graft combination which exhibited highest graft success rate (93.03%) was SM01x EC98. The highest root length was recoded in graft combination SM01 x EC97 (22.85 cm) followed by ST05 x DOrg and SM01 x EC98. Better root growth as root fresh weight was recorded in graft combination ST05 x EC97 (18.39 g) followed by SM01 x EC98 and ST05 x DOrg (17.65 g and 17.05 g, respectively) but root dry weight was recorded maximum in graft combinations i.e., ST05 x DOrg (13.20g) followed by ST05 x EC98 and SM01 x EC97 (12.59 and 12.23 g, respectively). Further studies are required for the selection of best rootstocks that support vigorous growth of the scions under interspecific grafting for improved graft compatibility and plant growth.