The Eggplants Crop Technology Optimization by Grafting

Abstract

Soil fumigation has been an essential component of greenhouses crops since the 1960`s. Growing vegetables without soil fumigants has remained a challenge, partially because of the lack resistance to many soil borne plant pathogens of the commercially acceptable eggplant cultivars produced through conventional breeding. In field production, crop rotation is important to prevent infestation with diseases and pests. However, crop rotation is rarely practiced in greenhouse production, which allows soil-borne pathogens and pests to accumulate, progressively reducing crop yields. Grafting cultivars with high quality and productivity on rootstocks that are resistant to the soil pests and diseases is a method known from years ago, which was improved and quickly spread in the last years. Therefore, the aim of this research was to evaluate the performance of the eggplant grafting on the some rootstocks, in greenhouse conditions. There have been determined and calculated the marketable yield, fruits quality, frequency and root galling index of soil-borne diseases and nematodes, in the experimental variants. Grafting was found to resulted in an increased marketable yield and significantly reduced the incidence of Verticillium dahliae and Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. melongenae.