GRAFTING METHODS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS FOR PRODUCING PEACH-TREE CV. ‘DIAMANTE’ SEEDLINGS

Abstract

Seedling quality is essential for producing quality fruits and keeping the producer revenue. The main goal of this research was to investigate the effect of different environmental conditions and three grafting methods in the production of peach-tree seedlings (Prunus persica (L.) Batsch). The experiment took place at the Universidade Federal de Lavras, Minas Gerais State, Brazil. The experimental design was completely randomized, in a 3x3 factorial scheme (three environments: plastic greenhouse, mesh of 50% of shading, and open field; and three grafting methods: shield budding, patch budding, and cleft grafting), with four replications and 12 plants per plot. ‘Okinawa’ was the rootstocks used, and buddings and grafts originated from the ‘Diamante’ peach-tree cultivar. The features evaluated were graft-take (%) and time to reach the first formation pruning (days). It was concluded that the mean average graft-take percentage for all three grafting methods was 91.94%, independently of the environment. For all three environmental conditions studied, seedlings grafted according to the cleft grafting method were the fastest ones to reach the first formation pruning, while the patch budding method allowed less time for the first formation pruning, for the open field and mesh environments, when compared with the shield budding method.

KEY-WORDS: Prunus persica (L.); environmental conditions; propagation.