Grafting transforms low quality fruit trees into the best commercial varieties. Trees that earn money are rarely cut down to produce charcoal: they make more each year than their value as wood products. Grafted fruit trees help halt deforestation, they stabilize the environment and offer many nutritional benefits.

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Grafting Fruit Trees

GRAFTING TRANSFORMS LOW QUALITY FRUIT TREES
INTO THE BEST COMMERCIAL VARIETIES

Since 1985, ORE been involved in grafted fruit tree production. ORE has grafted more than 1,000,000 commercial quality fruit trees to date and has trained over 500 technicians from over 40 organizations throughout the country in grafting techniques. ORE has been involved in high value tree propagation, production, post-harvest and marketing - in particular by assisting farmers with post harvest activities, including shipment of fruits to market in cases.

Production ORE uses two major grafting methods - nursery production and top-grafting trees in the field. Nursery production: large quantities of seedlings in plastic bags are grafted with commercial varieties, and the seedlings are distributed to farmers for planting in the field. Top-grafting is the technique used to transform existing low-quality fruit trees, by pruning them and then grafting them with commercial varieties.

The slideshows on these pages show a few photos for grafting each type of tree: mango, avocado and citrus.

Nursery production makes it possible to produce large quantities of seedlings in plastic bags and graft them with commercial varieties. These seedlings are then distributed to farmers for planting in the field and around the home.

Top-grafting is the technique used to transform existing low-quality fruit trees, by pruning them and then grafting them with commercial varieties. This activity is implemented by teams of locally trained grafting technicians who go from one locality to another, grafting the farmers' trees. Top-worked trees generally bear fruit with the grafted varieties during the next one or two seasons.

Low quality trees, grown from discarded seeds, are found in abundance throughout the countryside, but their fruit has little commercial value. It is estimated that less than 25% of Haiti's fruit trees are of acceptable commercial quality. Low quality trees are being systematically cut down for sale as fuel and wood products with devastating effects on the environment. Top-grafting these trees is a very effective method of transforming them into commercial quality fruit trees. The high income from the sale of the fruits, generally protects top-worked trees from the widespread tree-cutting that has devastated Haiti's ecology. They provide an important source of revenue and at the same time help to safeguard the environment.

Advantages of Grafting: Grafting fruit trees enables you to clone the commercial qualities of a particular fruit variety on another tree - whereas the quality of the fruit from trees grown from seed can be highly variable. Also, grafted trees come into production much earlier than trees grown from seeds - they usually bear fruit within 2-3 years, whereas in the case of trees grown from seed you have to wait 5-10 years before harvesting.

 

A look at the benefits of grafting in ORE's Tree Programs

Grafted Fruit Trees
ORE began its grafting program in 1985, prior to grafting was little known in Haiti, Grafting is today become a preferred propagation technique for fruit trees. Low quality mango trees, sour oranges and avocados can be grafted with budwood from a commercial varieties transforming the trees so that they bear commercial quality fruits.

Support our efforts to graft fruit trees in Haiti

 Grafted fruit trees yield high quality fruit that create more income,
replace deforestation and provide better living conditions.
Help us in our goal to make grafted fruit trees widely available in Haiti.
Donate to ORE