Horticulture: Fruits, Vegetables, Floriculture, and Nursery Management
Horticulture covers fruit, vegetable, flower and nursery production. The exam tests propagation choices, training and pruning, spacing, nursery hygiene, protected cultivation and the difference between scion and rootstock.
Core rules
- Sexual propagation uses seed and is common in vegetables and some flowers. Asexual propagation uses cuttings, layering, grafting, budding and suckers; it preserves the cultivar and is standard for most fruit trees.
- In grafting, the scion supplies the fruit-bearing canopy and the rootstock supplies roots, anchorage and often disease or soil adaptation. The graft union must be compatible and properly healed.
- Training shapes the plant; pruning removes or shortens parts to regulate growth, light and fruiting. Do not use the terms interchangeably.
- Nursery media need good drainage, aeration, water holding and freedom from pathogens. Sterilisation or solarisation reduces damping-off and weed pressure.
Worked example
Mango is planted at 10 m × 10 m. Area per tree = 100 m2. Trees per hectare = 10,000 ÷ 100 = 100. If 10% extra plants are raised for gap filling, nursery requirement = 110 plants. Reasoning: spacing gives the area occupied by one tree; dividing the hectare by that area gives the plant population. The extra plants are not part of the final orchard population but are needed for replanting.
Traps that cost marks
Do not say the rootstock determines fruit quality; the scion does. Do not recommend seed propagation for a crop where true-to-type fruit is required. Do not confuse pruning with training. In protected cultivation, check whether the question asks about temperature, humidity, light or pollination, because each has different management.