Avocado Propagation Technique

Technique To Propagate

We will use cuttings in the juvenile phase from our preferred cultivar, the mother tree of our avocados.  The cuttings we use we get from the grown trees we planted near our nursery in the Paarl area, Paarl have a good climate for avocados to grow naturally. We will get our mother trees, healthy and grown, from Westfalia Nursery and with our preferred cultivar.  Westfalia have already agreed to sell us some of there mother trees with healthy and high quality genes.

The technique we will use to propagate is grafting, the preferred cutting, as a scion, onto a already fully grown root system and root stock.  We will grow out the root stock from a seed of the same cultivar, but it would be different in gene pools.  We will inspect the growth and health of plants, if any root stock has diseases, illness or poor growing/rooting it will be discarded.  Its discarded because we don’t want any disease to be carried onto the scion that will become the new tree.  The scion that will be used comes from the same mother tree so that all the trees will have the same gene pools.  When the scion has grown bigger and it has enough leaves, a vessel of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium) and hormones (auxin) will be placed above the root stock on the scion to stimulate root growth on the scion.  When the scion has enough roots to survive on its own,it will be cut off at the bottom of the vessel.  The root stock will be used again to put on the next cutting/scion to grow on.