Soft wood grafting - A novel and rapid multiplication technique in Coorg mandarin (Citrus reticulate Blanco)

Abstract

Coorg mandarin is commercially multiplied by shield or T budding. The process of shield budding will takes eighteen to twenty months for the production of quality planting material. Hence present experiment was conducted to standardize soft wood grafting in Coorg mandarin to reduce the nursery phase for rapid multiplication of quality planting materials. In this study, two to three months old terminal shoots of Coorg mandarin were grafted on one, two, three and four months old rootstocks of Rangpur lime. The soft wood grafting on three and four months old rootstocks were recorded cent per cent graft success and higher plant survivability (98%) and minimum was noticed in one month old rootstocks. The plant height (45.77 cm), plant girth (0.60 cm), number of leaves per plant (42.9), number of side shoots per plant (5.65), root length (33.15 cm) and root spread (8.29 cm) were also found maximum on four months old root stocks followed by three month old rootstocks. Age of rootstocks have significant difference (P=0.05) for plant weight, shoot weight and root weight in both fresh and dry weight basis.The above findings revealed that, four months old rootstocks are more suitable for soft wood grafting in terms of graft success and plant traits. Soft wood grafting can be gainfully exploited for rapid multiplication of good quality planting material by reducing the nursery phase.