Use of Unrooted Grafted Vegetable Cuttings: I. Effects of Healing Duration and Transportation Temperature

ogy to overcome soil-borne diseases and pests and to add extra vigor to the plants under various environmental stress conditions. In order to advance the use of grafting in U.S. vegetable production in open fields, key issues to address include 1) increasing the propagation capacity to meet the expected large number of seedlings necessary to supply the demands of typically large farms and 2) reducing production costs. Traditionally, vegetable grafting is a labor-intensive process involving much training and logistics. However, the seasonal nature of nursery operations due to the limitation of transportation of the grafted seedlings is problematic when nurseries are interested in introducing…