ABSTRACT
Plant grafting is the process of uniting two living plant parts, rootstock and scion, so that they grow as a single plant (Figure 16.1). The main procedures involved in this process are (1) choosing the proper rootstock and scion species; (2) creating a graft union by physical manipulation; (3) healing the union; and (4) acclimating the grafted plant. Grafting of vegetable plants is an old practice, with grafting of Cucurbitaceae being mentioned in a Korean book in the seventeenth century. The rst commercial use of grafting of vegetable plants was in Asia in the twentieth century. Grafting of eggplants (Solanum melongena L., Solanaceae) was initiated in the 1950s, followed by grafting of cucumber (Cucumis sativus L., Cucurbitaceae) and tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum L., Solanaceae) around 1960 and 1970, respectively. More recently, a number of tools and machines have been developed by various companies to perform grafting and to hold the graft unions together (Lee and Oda 2003), enabling the production of large numbers of grafted plants in a relatively short time (Kurata 1994; Lee 2003; Lee et al. 2010). Consequently, grafting of vegetable plants has become common practice in many countries, such as Japan, Korea, the United States, Spain, Italy, Turkey, and Greece (Cohen et al. 2007). For example, in the year 2008, there were 3000 million grafted vegetable plants in Japan and Korea (Lee et al. 2010).
