Improve Yield With Fewer Resources Through Grafting

Grafting tomato plants has many benefits including combating plant diseases and improving the life cycle of a crop. One of the less often discussed benefits of grafting is that it allows you to save energy and reduce labor all the while improving yield and making your greenhouse more sustainable.

Grafted plants versus non-grafted plants

Before we get into how grafting makes greenhouses more sustainable, let’s first discuss the differences between grafted and non-grafted plants. Here are some of the main differences:

• Immunity: Grafted plants are more resistant to diseases because they benefit from the immunity of different plant varieties.
• Temperature tolerance: Grafted plants can thrive in wider temperature ranges because their rootstock is stronger. Non-grafted plants often fail to absorb nutrients at cold temperatures.
• Look: The better uptake of nutrients and more vital root system results in a better plant color. Grafted plants are often greener, stronger, and grow faster because they generally absorb nutrients faster than non-grafted plants. Their skin is also more elastic and more resistant to damage.

How does grafting make greenhouses more sustainable?

Once you understand the difference between grafted and non-grafted plants, you can organize your greenhouse according to the needs of your plants.

Temperature

As mentioned, grafted rootstock thrives at various temperatures. Even at just 10 degrees Celsius, grafted plants are still absorbing nutrients and water from the soil. This means that you don’t need to use energy to heat your greenhouses at night. Instead, you can use natural daylight to warm your greenhouses during the day and this heating should generally be enough to maintain an ideal temperature overnight.

Eliminating the need to heat your greenhouse can lead to energy savings of up to about 25%. It also yields higher humidity and CO2 levels, making your greenhouse an even more ideal environment for growth.

Chemicals

Grafted plants are generally greener and brighter because they are stronger, more durable, and less vulnerable. This means they have better immunity and are more resistant to environmental damage. For this reason, grafted plants require fewer pesticides and chemicals for healthy growth.

Using fewer chemicals can save you money as well as save you the labor for treating your plants with unnecessary chemicals and pesticides.

Labor

You can significantly reduce the amount of labor required to maintain your greenhouse with grafted plants. Grafting leads to a longer plant lifecycle, meaning your fruit production season is longer and your plants will produce fruits for an extended period. When seasons are longer, this means you have fewer cycles throughout the year.

When you have fewer cycles, there are fewer periods throughout the year that you have to invest time and labor to finish a growing season and replant for the next one.

How does grafting improves yield?

Not only does grafting help you reduce the resources required to maintain your greenhouse, but it will also improve your yield.

More weeks of production

When you plant tomatoes, you have to wait 8-10 weeks until you see fruits. Let’s say you generally have four seasons per year. That means you might have 36 weeks without fruit. If you can eliminate at least one cycle, that means you have eight more weeks of fruit production.

Get more fruit per plant

It may seem counter-intuitive to use fewer plants to produce more fruit, but plant density plays an important role in how much fruit plants produce. To prove this point, let’s say in your greenhouse there are 1,800 joules of light sum per square meter. If you have four plants, that means each can absorb 450 joules. The plant needs 180 of those joules to thrive, leaving just 270 joules for the fruit. For ideal growth, you want to ensure that 70% of the energy goes to the fruit, meaning that here you have too many plants for energy to support their growth.

If you reduce the number of plants to three, each plant absorbs 600 joules. The plant still needs 180 joules, but this leaves 450 joules for the fruit, which can lead to an up to 16% increase in fruit production. Now, imagine this on the large scale of your greenhouse. That is a significant increase in production.

Find the right grafting combination for your greenhouse

Because there are so many different varieties of tomatoes, there are an infinite number of combinations you can create through grafting. Each combination will have its own benefits and may be better for different environments.

You need to find the best rootstock variety for your climate. The best variety will create the right balance between leaves and fruit on your plant, ensuring that you get the highest yield.

When you are looking for the right grafting combination for your greenhouse, the first step is to look at what other growers in your climate are doing.
Which grafting combinations are working for them? Have they tried combinations that were more successful or less?

The next step requires experimenting. You may test different grafting combinations to see which plants thrive best in your scenario. You might graft multiple varieties at the same time and see which plants produce the most and the tastiest fruit.

To ensure success during your grafting trials, you need to use high-quality grafting clips that will provide a precise union between the rooting stock and the scion, while providing undisturbed growth and ongoing protection during the growing process. This means providing the exact pressure at the grafting point and protecting the plants from infection, bacteria, and viruses.

Paskal has acquired Tecnografting to create a range of grafting clips designed specifically for different fruit families.
Click here to learn more about our grafting clips.

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Mr. Peter Klapwijk is currently delving into R&D. In the past, his work was very practical, and he helped so many companies. He thoroughly enjoys working with Paskal and all their latest innovative developments while always trying to keep it simple.

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