This book provides comprehensive, current scientific and applied practical knowledge on vegetable grafting, a method gaining considerable interest that is used to protect crops from soil-borne diseases, abiotic stress and to enhance growth/yield. Though the benefits of using grafted transplants are now fully recognized worldwide, understanding the rootstock/scion interactions under variable environmental pressures remains vital for grafting-mediated crop improvement. In this book the authors attend to this need and explain the reasons for, and methods and applications of, grafting. Vegetable Grafting: Principles and Practices covers: · rootstock breeding, signalling, and physiological and molecular mechanisms involved in grafting; · beneficial effects of grafting including reducing disease damage and abiotic stress; · side effects relating to the impact of grafting on fruit quality; and · practical applications and speciality crops. Including high-quality colour images and written by an international team of expert authors, this book provides up-to-date scientific data and is also concerned with translating science to the field. It is an essential resource for researchers, advanced technicians, practitioners and extension workers. ; This book provides comprehensive and current scientific and practical knowledge on vegetable grafting, a method gaining considerable interest as an alternative to the use of fumigants to protect crops from soil-borne diseases. ;

• 1: Introduction to vegetable grafting
• 1.1: Importance and use of vegetable grafting
• 1.2: The process of vegetable grafting
• 1.3: Problems associated with vegetable grafting
• 1.4: Conclusions
• 2: Genetic resources for rootstock breeding
• 2.1: Genetic diversity
• 2.2: Genebank collections
• 2.3: Current usage of genetic material in rootstocks
• 2.4: Germplasm collection of other plant families
• 2.5: Concluding remarks
• 3: Rootstock breeding: current practices and future technologies
• 3.1: Introduction
• 3.2: Stacking traits: meiosis or grafting or both?
• 3.3: Developing stable, core collections of germplasm for breeding
• 3.4: Deploying genetic diversity for rootstocks
• 3.5: Grafting as a tool for genetic hybridisation and chimera production
• 3.6: Selection of improved rootstocks
• 3.7: Transgenic rootstocks
• 3.8: Rootstock registration and commercialization
• 4: Rootstock-scion signalling: key factors mediating scion performance
• 4.1: Introduction
• 4.2: Current knowledge of ionic and chemical signalling between rootstock and scion
• 4.3: Conclusions
• 5: Physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying graft compatibility
• 5.1: Introduction
• 5.2: Anatomical and physiological steps during graft union development
• 5.3: Role of secondary metabolites at the interface in graft incompatibility
• 5.4: Cell-to-cell communication between graft partners
• 5.5: Understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in graft union formation and compatibility.
• 5.6: Methods for examining graft union development and compatibility
• 5.7: Conclusions and future perspectives
• 6: Grafting as agro-technology for reducing disease damage
• 6.1: Introduction
• 6.2: The first step: Managing diseases in the nursery
• 6.3: Disease spread from the nursery to the field, the example of powdery mildew of watermelons
• 6.4: Intra- and interspecific grafting and their relations to diseases
• 6.5: Biotic or abiotic stress? Different responses of grafted plants to environmental conditions, the case of "physiological wilt", and germplasm selection for rational breeding
• 6.6: Grafted plants' response to nematodes
• 6.7: Commercial rootstocks and unknown genetics
• 6.8: Different mechanisms involved in disease resistance induced by grafting
• 6.9: Conclusions
• 7: Grafting as a tool to tolerate abiotic stress
• 7.1: Introduction
• 7.2: Temperature stress
• 7.3: Salinity stress
• 7.4: Nutrient stress
• 7.5: Stress induced by heavy metals and metalloids
• 7.6: Stress by adverse soil pH
• 7.7: Drought and flood stress
• 7.8: Conclusions
• 8: Quality of grafted vegetables
• 8.1: What is quality?
• 8.2: Rootstock effects on fruit quality
• 8.3: Effects of grafting on ripening and postharvest behaviour
• 8.4: Bio-physiological processes affecting fruit quality
• 8.5: Conclusion and perspectives
• 9: Practical applications and speciality crops
• 9.1: Establishment of grafted transplant under Mediterranean climate conditions
• 9.2: Recommendations for the use of grafted plants in greenhouses. The case of the Netherlands
• 9.3: Role of grafting in speciality crops
• 9.4: Conclusions and future perspective of vegetable grafting
• 10: Index