Objective(s):
The objective of this workshop will be to bring together leaders in the field of vegetable grafting to address the current issues, needs, challenges and technology status of this growing industry. Topics will include overview of vegetable grafting to use as IPM tactics, challenges to introduce grafting tomatoes and watermelon to U.S. tomato production, update on propagation technologies and issues and commercial vegetable grafting.

Fruiting vegetables are amongst the most important specialty crops in the USA. Vegetable grafting, recently introduced to North America, has attracted producer and industry interest alike. Advantages of vegetable grafting include increased vigor and yield, increased abiotic stress tolerances (chilling and salt stress), as well as increasing tolerances to soil borne disease and pests. Vegetable grafting has attracted interest from greenhouse growers and organic producers and there is also great potential for developing more sustainable open-field production systems. Currently, a relatively small amount of grafted plants (~40 millions) are imported from Canada and used in U.S. greenhouse production. An issue unique to the U.S. open-field production is the large number of seedlings needed in a single shipment. Despite the potential value in U.S. fruiting vegetable production, access to grafted seedlings is limited because of the limited local propagation capacity and challenges associated with the use in open fields. Intensive labor input and complexity in logistics tend to increase the costs of grafting, while academic research results began to show the promising efficacy when appropriate scion and rootstock combination was selected. Semi- or fully-automated grafting robots have been invented by several agricultural machine industries. Existing grafting robots have limited adaptation to U.S. propagators because of the lack of flexibility (e.g., in tray size and plant size). Strategies to resolve these issues include use of highly controlled environments for producing standardized seedlings suitable for automation coupled with the incorporation of sorting and grafting robots. This workshop will bring together the leaders from academia and industry that are currently working to assist growers and propagators to adopt this technology, and to conduct problem-solving research taking a systems approach including biology, engineering, and economics. Members of ASHS will be well served and gain great insight on updated research activities and new technologies relating to the developing use of vegetable grafting in U.S. production.