Vegetable Grafting Principles and Practices

This book provides comprehensive, current scientific and applied practical knowledge on vegetable grafting, a method gaining considerable interest that is used to protect crops from soil-borne diseases, abiotic stress and to enhance growth/yield. Though the benefits of using grafted transplants are now fully recognized worldwide, understanding the rootstock/scion interactions under variable environmental pressures remains vital for grafting-mediated crop improvement. In this book the authors attend to this need and explain the reasons for, and methods and applications of, grafting.

Vegetable Grafting: Principles and Practices covers:
· rootstock breeding, signalling, and physiological and molecular mechanisms involved in grafting;
· beneficial effects of grafting including reducing disease damage and abiotic stress;
· side effects relating to the impact of grafting on fruit quality; and
· practical applications and speciality crops.

Including high-quality colour images and written by an international team of expert authors, this book provides up-to-date scientific data and is also concerned with translating science to the field. It is an essential resource for researchers, advanced technicians, practitioners and extension workers.

1: Introduction to vegetable grafting
. 1.1: Importance and use of vegetable grafting
. 1.2: The process of vegetable grafting
. 1.3: Problems associated with vegetable grafting
. 1.4: Conclusions

2: Genetic resources for rootstock breeding
. 2.1: Genetic diversity
. 2.2: Genebank collections
. 2.3: Current usage of genetic material in rootstocks
. 2.4: Germplasm collection of other plant families
. 2.5: Concluding remarks

3: Rootstock breeding: current practices and future technologies
. 3.1: Introduction
. 3.2: Stacking traits: meiosis or grafting or both?
. 3.3: Developing stable, core collections of germplasm for breeding
. 3.4: Deploying genetic diversity for rootstocks
. 3.5: Grafting as a tool for genetic hybridisation and chimera production
. 3.6: Selection of improved rootstocks
. 3.7: Transgenic rootstocks
. 3.8: Rootstock registration and commercialization

4: Rootstock.scion signalling: key factors mediating scion performance
. 4.1: Introduction
. 4.2: Current knowledge of ionic and chemical signalling between rootstock and scion
. 4.3: Conclusions

5: Physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying graft compatibility
. 5.1: Introduction
. 5.2: Anatomical and physiological steps during graft union development
. 5.3: Role of secondary metabolites at the interface in graft incompatibility
. 5.4: Cell.to.cell communication between graft partners
. 5.5: Understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in graft union formation and compatibility.
. 5.6: Methods for examining graft union development and compatibility
. 5.7: Conclusions and future perspectives

6: Grafting as agro.technology for reducing disease damage
. 6.1: Introduction
. 6.2: The first step: Managing diseases in the nursery
. 6.3: Disease spread from the nursery to the field, the example of powdery mildew of watermelons
. 6.4: Intra. and interspecific grafting and their relations to diseases
. 6.5: Biotic or abiotic stress? Different responses of grafted plants to environmental conditions, the case of "physiological wilt", and germplasm selection for rational breeding
. 6.6: Grafted plants' response to nematodes
. 6.7: Commercial rootstocks and unknown genetics
. 6.8: Different mechanisms involved in disease resistance induced by grafting
. 6.9: Conclusions

7: Grafting as a tool to tolerate abiotic stress
. 7.1: Introduction
. 7.2: Temperature stress
. 7.3: Salinity stress
. 7.4: Nutrient stress
. 7.5: Stress induced by heavy metals and metalloids
. 7.6: Stress by adverse soil pH
. 7.7: Drought and flood stress
. 7.8: Conclusions

8: Quality of grafted vegetables
. 8.1: What is quality?
. 8.2: Rootstock effects on fruit quality
. 8.3: Effects of grafting on ripening and postharvest behaviour
. 8.4: Bio.physiological processes affecting fruit quality
. 8.5: Conclusion and perspectives

9: Practical applications and speciality crops
. 9.1: Establishment of grafted transplant under Mediterranean climate conditions
. 9.2: Recommendations for the use of grafted plants in greenhouses. The case of the Netherlands
. 9.3: Role of grafting in speciality crops
. 9.4: Conclusions and future perspective of vegetable grafting

10: Index