Vegetative Propagation Techniques

Perennial plants can be propagated in vegetative or generative ways. Fruit and nut trees are usually propagated by vegetative means using grafting methods. For this, there are two types of grafting methods: budding and grafting. Both of them are used for the same purpose - to create a new plant through the union of a suitable rootstock and an aerial part of another plant of the desired variety, called a scion. Other fruits are propagated by their own cuttings, such as stem, root and runner.

This practice of vegetative propagation of fruit trees dates back to ancient times. China had been using grafting techniques since pre-classical times. The Greeks and Romans adopted this strategy and spread these methods all over Europe.

Sexual reproduction of fruit trees is a rarely used method in horticulture. Mainly applied in research stations to conserve the richness of the gene pool and develop new varieties. On the production side, this method cannot satisfy the requirements for production quality and quantity. The new specimen, resulted from the sexual reproduction, carries unpredictable characteristics of its own, which includes the tendency to revert to a wild-like state of the specie. However, some of the known fruits keep intact their specific characteristics of the variety independently from the way, which was used for propagation. It can be sexual or asexual reproduction these fruits inherit the characteristics of the variety. The chestnut is a typical representative of this group.

Plant can be asexually reproduced either by using part of two or more plants in a union or parts of the same plant. In the first case we call it graftage and in the second case we call it rooting. All asexual propagation techniques belong one of the two categories.