Studies on the Production of Budded Nursery Plants in Stool Beds of ‘Rubira’ Peach (Prunus persica [Linnaeus] Batsch)

A newly introduced peach clonal rootstock, ‘Rubira’, when multiplied through mound layering, the daughter stool shoots attain excessive diameter making it difficult to perform grafting in the next season. To overcome this problem, the present study aimed to conduct budding on daughter stool shoots of ‘Rubira’ peach rootstock produced through mound layering during the summer or rainy season of the same year, further accounting for production of saleable plants within 1 year. The experiment consisted of 15 treatment combinations of budding methods (chip, shield and patch) and timing of budding (22nd May, 6th June, 21st June, 6th July, and 21st July). The results revealed that chip and shield budding performed on 22nd May and 6th June had maximum bud take success (100.00%). The chip budding performed on 22nd May resulted in significantly higher scion height (139.42 cm), scion diameter (12.68 mm), fresh weight of shoots (127.33 g), root–shoot biomass (82.41 g dry weight) and saleable plants (99.96%). Moreover, chip budding performed on May 22nd demonstrated the highest levels of leaf carbohydrate (6.65%), total sugars (1.76%) and leaf nitrogen (3.82%). The bud-take success was significantly positively correlated with saleable plant, scion height, scion diameter, number of internodes, fresh weight of root, root–shoot biomass, leaf carbohydrate and leaf nitrogen, whereas significantly negatively correlated with fresh weight of shoot. The chip budding performed during the last week of May to the first week of June was found to be the best method and time for production of quality nursery plants of peach in stool beds of ‘Rubira’ rootstock under mound layering within 1 year.