Evaluation of four types of cocoa grafts (Theobroma cacao L.) using as a graft the ICS-95 clone in two-year-old rootstocks established in the field at Cooperativa Santa Clara, San Luis Talpa, La Paz, El Salvador.

Abstract

With the objective of evaluating different types of grafting to identify the most promising for its success in the development of rootstocks developed in the field in the Cooperative Association of Agricultural Production Santa Clara No. 2 of R.L., municipality of San Luis Talpa, La Paz; An investigation was carried out, using the following grafts: lateral veneer, Malay, terminal spike and patch. An experiment with a completely randomized design was used, with five repetitions, using 5 plants as an experimental unit, totaling 100 plants. The grafting was performed in september 2018, evaluating the following variables: height, diameter of the stem and rootstock, success of graft seizure, degrees of development days (GDD), number of leaves and buds of the graft. To analyze the results, the statistical program InfoStat® was used with its respective Tukey test for the comparison of means, in the same way the correlation between the variables was determined using the Pearson correlation coefficient. As a result, it was found that the greatest success in the graft seizure was the lateral veneer, followed by the Malay graft, terminal spike and with less success the patch. With respect to the number of leaves and number of shoots, the one with the most development was the terminal wedge, followed by the side veneer and the Malay, and to a lesser extent the patch. It is recommended to use the lateral and Malay veneer graft for cocoa plantations of two years of age or older, which were shown to favor the graft seizure success.