Potential Use of Spring Budding Techniques in Production of Plum Nursery Trees

The main objective of this work was to verify the possibility of shortening the time needed to produce nursery trees of plums, in view of the economic profitability in nursery production. To achieve this goal, rootstocks Citation^®, Ishtara^®, Penta^®, Torinel^®, Pumiselekt and St. Julien (from Wädenswil) were chip budded in the springtime with ‘Shiro’, ‘Angeleno’^®, ‘Black Amber’, SLE2014/1, ‘Fertility’ (Asian type plums) and ‘Stanley’ (European type plum) as a control. At the end of the vegetation period, height (from the grafting position), trunk diameter above the place of budding and the number of shoots was recorded for each tree. The Penta^® rootstock was evaluated as the most efficient, while ‘Shiro’ variety was evaluated as the most suitable variety. The best variety/rootstock combination was the combination of ‘Shiro’ on Ishtara^® rootstock, where 100% of the budded trees reached an average height of 33.0 ± 3.6 cm. The highest trees of an average of 68.3 ± 4.6 cm were recorded for the combination of SLE2014/1 on Torinel^® root-stock.