Plant Propagation and Nursery Management (1+1)

Introduction

The ultimate success of an orcharding enterprise largely depends upon the quality and genuinity of planting materials as nursery plants are the foundation of the orchard. The variation of scionwood and rootstock has great bearing on the productivity of an orchard. Thus, it is of immense importance having all plants carefully labeled or otherwise marked. The whole process involves various steps as mentioned under:
Selection of mother trees

Creation of budwood bank
Maintenance of budwood band/ repository of improved high yielding and commercial cultivars of different fruits at a central place, preferably at the major production areas of respective fruits under the supervision of university/ department for raising of mother blocks/ trees for further multiplication.
Selection of varieties: The identification and listing of cultivars to be propagated is very important. After listing the cultivars, their meritorious plants are to be selected, which give regular yields of high quality fruits and are marked for further study/use as budwood source.
Indexing of viral diseases: The progeny plants are the major source for the spread of viral diseases. There are reports available where in apple mosaic alone has been responsible for reduction of 40 per cent yield and 50 per cent productive life. The bud take success in temperate fruits is also low in affected trees. Thus, the selected meritorious trees should be indexed for virus and then categorized accordingly. The parent trees showing abnormality in characters with passage of time should be discarded from the progeny orchard.
Maintenance of mother trees: Identified mother trees are used to develop progeny hedges in large number near to the nursery site at 2x2m distance. The hedges are properly labeled and used for scion wood. Progeny trees are heavily pruned to produce scion wood in bulk. Adequate plant protection measures are also adopted to keep these progeny hedges free from the insect/pests and diseases. Such practices of maintaining scion/mother tree hedges are common in various advanced nurseries in overseas countries. Old trees of selected varieties can also be pruned severely to develop forced shoots to be used as scion source, in the orchard site only till progeny hedges are developed.