Grafting an effective tool for abiotic stress alleviation in vegetables

Grafting of vegetable is a unique horticultural technology practiced for many years in East Asia to overcome issues associated with intensive cultivation using limited arable land. This technology was introduced to Europe and other countries in the late 20th century along with improved grafting methods suitable for commercial production of grafted vegetable. Later, grafting was introduced to North America from Europe and it is now attracting growing interest worldwide, both from greenhouse and open field growers. Vegetable crops are often exposed to abiotic stresses in the root zone (e.g. salinity, drought, alkalinity and heavy metals contamination) limiting crop productivity in many parts of the world. One way to avoid or reduce losses in production caused by adverse soil chemical conditions in vegetables crops in particular Solanaceous crops (tomato, eggplant, and pepper) and Cucurbits (watermelon, melon and cucumber) would be to graft them onto rootstocks capable of reducing the effect of external stresses on the shoot. This review gives an actual overview how grafting can alleviate the adverse effects of the main abiotic stresses on vegetable’s crop performance at agronomical level. The paper will also focus on the additional improvement of abiotic stresses tolerance through integration of vegetable grafting with other control strategies such as inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and fertilization.