Who invented tree grafting

It must have seemed magical then as it still somewhat does today. The ancients figured out, probably quickly, that you could preserve the traits of a particular plant by grafting a piece of it the scion onto another plant the rootstock or stock. However, there were precise limits to what that other plant could be.

We know now that grafting, with rare exception, only works within a botanical genus; i. In fact, scientists have used such graft compatibility or incompatibility to demonstrate relatedness among species.

It has even prompted the re-categorization of some species. For instance, the Asian cudrang also known as the Chinese mulberry , was once dubbed Cudrania tricuspidata. It was recently changed to Muscadinia rotundifolia partly there were other botanical reasons because grafting between muscadines and bunch grapes Vitis labrusca, V.

So, we must graft apples onto apples and pears onto pears. For millennia, people grafted scionwood from a particularly valued apple variety onto apple seedlings or onto another, already-established apple tree. The seedlings could even be from crab apples. In the 20 th century, English researchers started exploiting the diversity in an apple seedling population for size and other genetic traits. They discovered that using certain individual apple seedlings as rootstocks produced fairly small apple trees dwarf.

The trees had other desirable traits like coming into bearing early in their lives precocious. Perhaps this is a topic for another blog.

The craft of grafting relies on the scientific truth that the cambium of the scion needs to be in close, tight contact with the cambium of the rootstock. In order to maximize that contact, it is advantageous that the cut surfaces of both scion and stock are smooth.

Ragged surfaces would reduce the contact between the two. The callus is a mass of undifferentiated cells. It might help the reader to think of the callus as analogous to a scab that your skin produces when it is wounded.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Health Benefits of Chickpeas. Discovery Depends on Having New Eyes. Today, we know that the cambium or actively growing layer of cells just below the bark is responsible for a successful graft. Where the cambium of the recipient stem unites with the cambium of the bud or stem grafted into it, the graft is successful and the two plants now grow as one.

The practice of grafting is best understood against the backdrop of fruit tree domestication, which started in the Middle East with the five Biblical fruits mentioned as indigenous to the Land of Israel.

Starting in the fourth millennium B. Noah, as recounted in the Book of Genesis, is famous for making sure that pairs of every animal species traveled with him in his ark during the flood. Yet Noah was a horticulturist, too. Soon after Noah left the ark, exactly a year after entering it during the fall season, he planted a grapevine which quickly produced grapes. Since the world had been inundated, plant life on earth had disappeared so the grapevine that grew must have been with Noah in the ark.

Since the flood came in the fall, that would have been the perfect time to detach hardwood grapevine cuttings and root them in pots of soil that Noah could have brought on board the ark. Inside the ark, with all those animals, it must have have been as warm as a well-heated nursery or hothouse. There was a skylight in the roof through which light would enter. Well positioned hardwood grape cuttings could have gotten sufficient light and, together with the animal generated heat, grown like weeds in this environment.

Who knows? Perhaps a year in the ark would have been time enough for those woody cuttings to produce grapes from which Noah made wine, albeit with unfortunate consequences, soon after leaving the ark.

It took another three thousand years, some time during the first millenium BC, before grafting was put into practice.

This procedure was an innovation of people living in the colder climate of northwest Asian, where grafting is thought to have begun.

Unlike the Middle Eastern semi-tropical fruit species mentioned above, which could be propagated simply by sticking stem pieces into the earth, the plums, peaches, cherries, apples, and pears of a chillier Asian environment could not be propagated in such a manner.

The first grafts were no doubt a result of seeing two fruit trees self-graft or graft naturally into one another, probably because they were growing so close to each other that two stems touched and then bonded together, as sometimes happens in nature.

The branch that grew from that natural graft probably bore fruit that was more plentiful and disease resistant — major reasons for grafting until today — than were produced previously. Bud grafting of citrus fruit tree. Interspecific grafting among Prunus, or stone fruit, species is common. Almond Prunus amygdalus buds may be grafted into peach Prunus persica , plum Prunus salicina , or apricot Prunus armeniaca seedlings. Intergeneric grafting of plants belonging to the same family is also sometimes feasible.

Quince Cydonia oblonga buds, for example, may be grated into pear Pyrus communis or loquat Eriobotrya japonica trees. All three of these trees belong to the rose family Rosaceae. Eventually, the bud will grow into what is known, in grafting parlance, as the scion, while the trunk and roots below the budding area compose the rootstock of the developing tree.

On a mature fruit tree, the point on the trunk where budding took place is known as the graft union and is typically visible as a swelling or bulge on the trunk.