Optimization of propagation techniques and timimg for the production of kiwi fruit ( Actinidia chinensis ) plant at Khyber Pakhtun Khwa Mingora Swat

The experiment was conducted to optimize the propagation techniques (budding & grafting) with different timing for production of kiwi fruit plant, at Agriculture Research Institute (North) Mingora Swat during 2013. The statistical analysis of the data showed that most of the growth parameters of kiwifruit plants were significantly influenced by different grafting dates and propagation methods. The plants propagated on 9 February showed maximum number of shoots (4.67) graft, number of leaves (119.00) graft, leaf area (106.67 cm), graft growth (108.5 cm), graft diameter (4.52 cm), plants survival (92.00%) and bud/graft take success (76.17%). While the plants propagated on 10 January took more number of days to sprouting (63.10). Similarly, the kiwi plants produced through chip budding showed the maximum days to sprouting (36.93), number of shoots (4.47) graft, number of leaves (84.46) graft, graft growth (87.47 cm), graft diameter (5.13 cm) and bud/graft take success (81.00%). While in case of tongue grafting, the maximum leaf area (101.73 cm) and plants survival (77.93%). The interaction of grafting dates on 9 February and propagation methods as tongue grafting significantly influenced the number of shoots graft, number of leaves graft, graft diameter and bud/graft take success while had non-significant effect on number of days to sprouting, leaf area, graft growth and plants survival. It was concluded from the findings of present research that the kiwifruit plants could be propagated through tongue grafting during start to mid-February under the agro climatic condition of swat valley.


Introduction
Kiwi (Actinidia chinensis) is a cross pollinated dioecious fruit in nature that belongs to the family Actinidaceae originated in china.The plant of kiwi fruit is a woody need support climbing shrub or twining vine (liana).A vigorous vine is commonly spread over area of 18 to 24 and 10 to15 feet in both directions of length and width respectively with height of nine to twelve feet.In crop growing it is maintained on a trellising system [1].The widespread cultivars of kiwi fruit are elliptical, about the bulk of hefty hen's egg (4.5-5.5 cm in diameter and 5-8 cm in long).It has a stringy brown-green skin and golden or bright green flesh with representation of petite, black edible seeds.The fruit has an exceptional flavor and Alex surface.Nowadays it is money making fruit in most of the countries like New Zealand and Italy.In the year 2011 Italy was the prominent producer with a production of 415,877 tones trailed by New Zealand with the production of 378,500 tones [2].Additional countries like United States, Chile, Greece, Iran, France, Cambodia, Japan and Canada are the major Kiwi production countries in the world.In Pakistan the production of Kiwi fruit is comparatively up to date.The kiwi fruit wine is grown 1.8 m (6 feet) trellises, to a great extent resembling to that of grapevine.They are very forceful and typically planted in rows 4.5m (15 feet) at a distance with the plants set 6m (20 feet) away from each other in the rows.Full bearing 10-years-old vines can give up 17 to 20 metric tons of fruit ha -1 (7 to 9) metric tons acre -1 [3].The plants are dioecious, bearing each male or female flower, thus plants requires both sexes to produce fruits.Self-fruiting males are wellknown to be present but produce less attractive fruits.The bulky (1 to 2 inch diameter), white to cream colored flowers are a bit sweet-scented and go out as triplets or single in the leaf axil.Flowering periods prolongs from early May to June, conditional on climatic circumstances [4].The kiwi fruit can be propagated vegetative by root and leaf cutting under mist irrigation, after treating them with indole butyric acid.They can also be propagated by whip or cleft grafting in the spring or by T-budding in late summer by means of one year old kiwifruit seedlings as rootstocks [5].Grafting and budding is used in a condition when other reproductive methods like stem cutting, layering or seeds are ineffective and climatic condition is also an unfavorable [6].Grafting is typically done in early spring or in winter when the scion is dormant, while budding is accomplished in active season when cambium layer is in abundant so it is usually done from June mid to late July, though it may be carried out at other times [7].Commonly kiwi fruit is propagated through root cutting, tongue grafting, budding i.e. chip or T budding.Good field nursery can be produced by both of tongue grafting and root cutting, while in budding chip budding is also a good method to reproduce the kiwi plant.The graft take success ratio in tongue grafting is more relatively high as compare to root cutting and T budding.Tongue grafted plant are more vigorous and healthy as compare to root cutting plants of kiwi plants [8].Objectives To optimize the most suitable time for successful grafting in kiwi fruit plant.To find out the best propagation method for survival of kiwi fruit plant.
To study the combine effect of propagation methods and time intervals for better production of kiwi plants under the agro climatic condition of swat valley.

Materials and methods
The experiment to study the "Influence of propagation techniques and timing on the performance of kiwifruit plant" was carried out at Agriculture Research Institute (North) Mingora Swat during 2013.Two propagation methods i.e.Tongue grafting, Chip budding on interval of 15 days (10 th January, 25 th January, 9 th February, 24 th February, 11 th March) were used and one year old seedling of cultivar Hayward was used as scion, Whereas Bruno was taken as rootstock.
Each treatment was consisting of 20 grafted plants.So the total number of experimental plants was 30 × 20= 600.The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with two factors and replicated three times.All the cultural practices were kept constant for all the treatments and the data on following parameters were recorded and analyzed statistically.

Days to sprouting
Data on the subject of days to sprouting was collected from 5 randomly selected plants for each treatment in every replication by counting from the day of grafting to the date of sprouting.

Number of shoots graft -1
The number of shoots of randomly taken five plants in each replication for each treatment was counted and then there means were found out.

Number of leaves graft -1
The number of leaves graft -1 was counted in each replication for each treatment of five randomly taken plants and then calculated their average accordingly.

Leaf area (cm 2 )
The leaves were taken randomly from each treatment in each replication and leaf area in centimeter square was measured with the help of leaf area measuring meter and then calculated their average.

Graft growth (cm)
With the help of measuring tape the length of scion growth of five randomly taken plants was recorded from the basal portion of the scion to the tip of the scion for each treatment in each replication and their average was noted.

Graft diameter (cm)
The graft diameter (cm) of scion growth at uniform height of five randomly taken plants for each treatment in each replication was measured with the help of Vernier caliper and calculated the mean.

Plant survival percentage
In each replication the percent plant survival for each treatment was recorded with the formula given below.

Percent plants survival= Number of survived plant x 100
Total number of plant Bud/ Graft take success (%) The data for percent bud/graft takes success was recorded after complete sprouting and successful growth of scion at the end of the growing season by using the formula.

Leaf area (cm 2 )
The mean values of the Table 2 declared that the different dates significantly affected while their interaction showed nonsignificant differences for leaf area of kiwifruit plants.The large leaf area (106.67 cm 2 ) was recorded in plants propagated on 9 th February which was statistically at par with plants propagated on 24 th February (104.67cm 2 ).The small leaf area (89.00 cm 2 ) was noted in kiwifruit plant propagated on 10 th January, 2013.Similarly, the grafting methods also significantly affected the leaf area of kiwifruits.The large leaf area (101.73cm 2 ) was noted in kiwifruit plant propagated through tongue grafting while the small leaf area (94.87cm 2 ) was recorded in kiwifruit plant propagated through chip budding technique [13] observed that appropriate time of propagation, environmental conditions and compatibility of scion and rootstock resulted in wellestablished union of grafted/budded plant.Tongue grafting provide a union in line with vascular tissues (xylem and phloem) that leads to a good translocation of water and nutrient to plant which resulted in good vegetative growth.The similar results were also observed by Mannan et al. [14] in jack fruit who reported that the plants were more vegetative more vigorous and produced large size of leaves when propagated during spring.

Graft growth (cm)
The Table 2 stated that the different dates significantly influenced the graft growth of kiwifruit plant.The tallest (108.5 cm) graft was measured in kiwifruits that were propagated on 9 th February, 2013, which was statistically in contrast to the rest of mean values, followed by graft growth (99.00 and 79.50 cm) in plant propagated on 24 th February and 11 March 2013 respectively, while the shortest (59.67 cm) graft was noted in plants propagated on 10 th January 2013.Similarly, the methods of propagation also showed a significant effect of graft growth of kiwifruit plant.The longest (87.47 cm) graft was noted in kiwifruits that were propagated through chip budding.The increase in shoot length might be due to a stronger graft union and development of the normal xylem and phloem vessels at the sight of graft union that regulates the movement of available water and nutrients from soil and thereby enhanced the active vegetative growth [15].The proper supply of growth regulating hormones (auxin) due to well joined union also improves the growth and development of shoot/scion [16].Other researchers like [17][18][19] recommended the technique of chip budding in kiwifruit as it enhanced the shoot length of propagated plant [20-23] also observed the superiority of chip budding against T budding in kiwifruit.

Graft diameter (cm)
The Table 1 showed that the different dates significantly influenced the graft diameter of kiwifruit plant.The maximum (4.52 cm) graft diameter was recorded in plant propagated on 9 th February which is statistically varied from rest of dates, followed by graft diameter (4.27 and 4.15 cm) in plants propagated on 24 th February and 25 th January, 2013, respectively.The minimum graft diameter (3.82 cm) was measured in kiwifruit propagated on 10 th January.Similarly, the grafting methods also significantly impacted the graft diameter of kiwifruit plant.The large graft (5.13 cm) was measured in kiwifruits propagated through the practice of chip budding.The interactive effect between different dates and methods also significantly affected the graft diameter.The maximum graft diameter (5.41 cm) was noted in kiwifruit propagated through chip budding on 9 th February while the minimum graft diameter (2.82 cm) was measured in plants propagated through tongue grafting technique on 10 th January.The grafting performed in dormant bud situation may enhance the better vegetative growth and resulted in the large graft diameter.Also, the grafting performed in growing season produced the good results

Plant survival percentage
The mean data in Table 1 resulted that the different dates significantly influenced the plant survival percentage of kiwifruit plant.The highest (92.00%) plant survival was recorded in the kiwifruit plants that are propagated on 9 th February , which is statistically varied from rest of mean values, followed by plant survival (88.17 and 83.67%) noted in plants that were propagated on 24 February and 11 March, 2013, respectively.The lowest (54.00%) plant survival was noted in kiwifruits that were propagated on 10 th January, 2013.Similarly, the different methods of propagation also significantly influenced the plant survival percentage of kiwifruit plant.The highest (77.93%) plant survival was recorded in kiwifruit plants that were propagated through tongue budding technique while the lowest plant survival (73.60%) was noted in kiwifruit which were associated with chip budding technique [26] stated that grafting in February offer favorable environmental conditions which is helpful for the healing process of the graft wounds and thus causes in development of normal vascular tissues at the graft union and enhances the plant survival.While [27] suggested that grafting can be done in any time during the dormant season but the successful healing of graft union took place when it is done early spring and monsoon season.The results are also in line with the findings of [13] who observed the highest plant survival during spring season in loquat fruit grafting.Bud/ graft take success Mean value in Table 1 for different dates showed a significant effect on bud/graft take success of kiwifruit plants.The highest (76.17%) bud/graft take success was noted in kiwifruits plants propagated on 9 February, 2013 followed by plant survival

[ 20 ]
. Comparing other various methods of budding and grafting [11, 15, 24] also obtained the maximum growth of plants propagated through chip budding.Similar results on different fruit species were also observed by Polak and Kaşka [21] in loquats and [25] on kiwifruit.

Table 2 . Days to sprouting , number of shoots graft -1 and number of leaves graft -1, leaf area (cm 2 ) and graft growth (cm) in kiwifruit plant as affected by propagation techniques and timing Grafting dates Days to sprouting Number of shoots graft -1 Number of leaves graft -1
Mean followed by similar letter(s) in column do not differ significantly.D x T = Interaction between grafting dates and propagation techniques