Progressive Horticulture

Adenium obesum, is recently gaining high popularity as a pot plant owing to its tolerance to abiotic stress, showy caudex and flowering habit. New varieties are developed in adenium, however, being highly heterozygous in nature, seed propagation does not yield true-to-type of plants hence, grafting method needs to be standardised. Research was conducted with the basic objective to standardise grafting technique in Adenium obesum at Advance technology centre of soilless system, Department of Floriculture and Landscape Architecture, Aspee college of Horticulture, navsari Agricultural University, navsari. (Gujarat) Different grafting technique comprising of wedge graft with scion length of 6, 9 and 12 cm and flat graft method with scion length of 2, 4 and 6 cm were tested for grafting of hybrid adenium on local wild rootstock of adenium. the experiment was conducted in greenhouse in cRD design for three consecutive years. Among different techniques of grafting tested for adenium, the method comprising of flat grafting using 2 cm of scion has been found to be highly suitable and preferable with regard to early graft union establishment, more number of leaves and early flower bud initiation. Further, adenium grafted using flat method with 2 cm scion looked aesthetically more appealing and showed higher survival percentage. These results clearly suggest flat grafting with 2 cm scion as an important and useful technique for propagation of true to type adeniums. this technique of grafting will be highly useful to the farmers and nursery men as well as for faster multiplication of preferable and selected genotypes in adenium by the breeders.