Grafting tomato on potato rootstocks and its effect on quality traits

Abstract

Grafting in horticultural fruit trees is a well established technique for cutting down its juvenile phase and to impart resistance against diseases and other abiotic stresses in an otherwise susceptible cultivar. Now days this technique is in widespread usage for grafting vegetable crops as well to combat biotic and abiotic stresses in addition to modifying growth and yield characteristics of the scion cultivar. A susceptible plant can be forced to behave like a resistant wild or cultivated relative by grafting the former as scion on latter. As the root system has a pivotal role in determining the overall vigour and growth characteristics of a plant, grafting certainly affects the various growth and biochemical characteristics of the scion genotype grafted on a distinct rootstock genotype. Therefore, the investigation was conducted in a naturally ventilated quonset polyhouse to study the effects of grafting on different quality traits of tomato genotypes grafted on potato rootstocks.