Plant Propagation and Nursery Management
Plant Propagation and Nursery Management examines how commercial planting material is produced and how a nursery is run to a saleable standard. Questions cover method selection, technique detail and nursery arithmetic.
Sexual versus asexual
Seed propagation is cheap and gives vigorous seedlings but variable progeny, so it is used for rootstocks (mango, citrus, ber) and vegetables. Asexual methods give true-to-type, uniform plants.
- Cuttings: hardwood (grape, fig), semi-hardwood (guava, citrus), softwood, leaf (begonia) and root cuttings; auxin (IBA 2,000-5,000 ppm) improves rooting and mist benches cut transpiration.
- Layering: air layering (gootee) is standard for mango, guava and litchi; a ring of bark must be removed so the cambium is exposed before wrapping in moist sphagnum and polythene.
- Grafting: wedge, whip-and-tongue and approach methods. Budding: T (shield), patch and ring. Scion and rootstock cambium must be in firm contact, the union tied and waxed, and the scion taken from healthy current-season wood.
Nursery management
Choose a site with deep, well-drained soil, assured water and road access; raise beds 15-20 cm high; sterilize soil or use soil-less media; harden plants under shade net; keep stock-scion records; grade before dispatch.
Worked example. A 1 ha orchard at 5 m x 5 m needs 400 plants. Add 10% for casualties: 440. If graft success is 85%, order 440 / 0.85 = 518 grafts. Reasoning: compute plant population first, then inflate by the failure rate; round up rather than down.
Traps that cost marks
- Removing bark but not the cambium in air layering.
- Budding when the rootstock bark does not slip.
- Grafting a dormant scion onto an actively growing stock.
- Storing scion material without moisture or shade.