Vegetable grafting in Thailand

Vegetable grafting in Thailand was still an early stage. Tomato was one of the first vegetable graftings introduced in the northeastern provinces of Thailand to control bacterial wilt caused by Ralstonia solanacearum. In 2007, grafted eggplant on Solanum torvum (Turkey berry) rootstock was introduced for bacterial wilt control. It was rapidly adopted. Grafted eggplant performed very well. It gives higher yield and provides much longer harvesting period. Grafted seedlings produce a larger plant and can be reduced from 2,500 to 500 plants acre(-1). Grafted bitter gourd (Mormordica charantia) on luffa rootstock (Luffa cylindrica) was also introduced, targeted for Fusarium wilt control and tolerance to water logging. Watermelon (Citrullus lunatus) grafted on a bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) rootstock was also successfully developed and under commercial development. Papaya (Carica papaya) grafting was successfully introduced and commercialized in 2017 as an alternative to high-cost and sophisticated micropropagation for producing all hermaphrodite seedlings.