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Even though grafting does not increase crop yield, it does reduce time to first harvest and improve resistance to certain kinds of pests and plant diseases, par
by exDM69 7y ago
Even though grafting does not increase crop yield, it does reduce time to first harvest and improve resistance to certain kinds of pests and plant diseases, particularly at the root.
In commerical wine production, most if not all vineyards have grafted the wine plants into rootstock of other plants (roses iirc) that have more resilient roots.
Some fruit trees are produced similarly, using a fast growing and resilient rootstock and grafting the fruit bearing branches on it.
And when buying new young trees to my garden (from a commercial supplier), I noticed that all of them look like grafts.
- Jedd 7y agoGrafting may well increase crop yield just because it increases vigour, and reduces disease & stress vectors, for the plant. I didn't intend to suggest grafting is bad -- it's clearly a great thing to do. All ~25 of my heirloom apple, peach, and pear varieties are grafted. And yes, I doubt you can find fruit trees in a nursery that aren't grafted. I was suggesting that multi-grafted trees are more bother than multiple single-grafted trees.