The crop of grafted peppers, an alternative - concerning the yield and quality - for vegetable growers

Soil fumigation has been an essential component of greenhouse crops since the 1960s. Growing vegetables without soil fumigants has remained a challenge, in part because commercially acceptable pepper cultivars produced through conventional breeding lack resistance to many soil borne plant pathogens. In field production, crop rotation is important to prevent infestation of diseases and pests. However, crop rotation is rarely practiced in greenhouse production, which allows soil borne pathogens and pests to accumulate, progressively reducing crop yields and fruit quality. Grafting cultivars with high quality and productivity on rootstocks that are resistant to the soil pests and diseases is a method known from years ago, which was improved and quickly spread in the last years. The aim of this research was to evaluate the performance of grafted peppers on some rootstocks, in greenhouse conditions. Marketable yield, fruit quality and nutritional qualities (total soluble solids contents, titratable acidity, soluble carbohydrates, vitamin C content) have been determined. The marketable yield and fruit number were positively influenced by rootstock compared with ungrafted peppers. The obtained results showed that grafting has improved the commercial quality of pepper fruits. There were no significant differences on the nutritional qualities of fruits peppers coming from the grafted or ungrafted plants.