Effect of Grafting Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) on its Selected Useful Characters

The grafting eggplants cultivars onto rootstocks that are resistant to the soil-borne pathogens and nematodes is a method known for many years, but which has improved and spread quickly in the last years.The objective of these experiments was to evaluate the influence of some rootstocks on the crop of grafted eggplant.The Romanian eggplant "Andra F1" and Dutch hybrid "Sharapova", were grafted onto the rootstocks "King Kong, Emperador, Hikyaku, KA-312, Torvum vigor and Espina".It was determined the influence of the eggplants rootstock on the marketable yield, early harvest, fruits quality and nutritional value.There were calculated the disease incidence (I %), disease severity (S %) and attack degree (AD%) at the experimental variants for soil pathogens Verticillium dahliae, respectively Fusarium oxysporum f. sp.melongenae and nematodes Meloidogyne spp.The resulted values were used to calculate the attack degree (as an expression of extending attack seriousness) on the following formula: AD% =(S% x I %) /100, where AD% represents attack degree.Presence of root galls induced by nematodes, were visually assessed at the end of the trials on 50% of the plants harvested from the middle of the plots.The rootstocks which led to the increase of yield and tolerance to the lower soil temperatures as well as to a earliness character of the yield were "Emperador, King Kong and Hikyaku".The percent of first class fruits were higher to the grafted eggplants than to the non-grafted plants.It not were registered significant differences between rootstocks concerning the influence of rootstock on the nutritional value of the eggplants fruits.The frequency of damage to the plants of eggplants by the soil-born pathogen and nematodes attack was significantly reduced by grafting eggplant scions onto resistant rootstocks.The rootstocks "Emperador, King Kong and Hikyaku" led to increased marketable yield, fruits quality, early harvest and nutritional value."Emperador F1" rootstocks reduced the frequency and severity of infection with the soil-borne pathogens and the nematodes attack.