Esraa Omar Bobo1*, Badie Mohammad Samra1, Ehab Thabet Ahmad2, Gheith Muhammad Nassour2
1 Horticulture Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Lattakia University, Syria.
2 General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research, Agricultural Research Center of Lattakia, Syria.
(*Corresponding author: Eng. Esraa Omar Bobo, E-mail: boboesraa7@gmail.com ).
Received: 2/ 6/ 2025 Accepted: 3/ 8/ 2025
Abstract
The investigation was conducted in a Plastic greenhouse during the 2023-2024 season in Alsnobar Research Center of Lattakia, to study the effect of grafting the Barcelona eggplant hybrid on growth and yield. The experiment included (3) treatments: Barcelona eggplant hybrid grafted onto a foreign rootstock (Extra Pro), Barcelona eggplant hybrid grafted onto a local grown wild rootstock and non-grafted plants (control). The treatments were arranged in (4) replications, each contained (10) plants, according to a randomized complete block design. The results showed that plants grafted onto the foreign rootstock significantly outperformed the control, followed by those grafted on the wild rootstock, in all measured traits, compared to the control including plant high (156.5, 145.3 and 106.7 cm respectively), the number of leaves per plant (186.3, 173.3 and 103.3 leaves/plant respectively), the number of flowers (44.79, 39.74 and 25.61 flowers/plant respectively), the percentage of fruit set per plant (94.04 and 90.02% respectively) and the total soluble sugars content in fruit juice (4.700 and 3.830% respectively) were higher. In contrast, the grafted plants significantly outperformed both the foreign and wild rootstocks in terms of leaf area (28.043 and 27.266 cm2/plant respectively), the total solids in fruit juice (5.033 and 4.767% respectively) and the total acidity (0.1200% in both) compared to the control without significant differences among the grafted plants. Grafted plants on the foreign rootstock exhibited a significant superiority in yield per unite area, followed by those grafted on the wild rootstock (6.616 and 5.853 kg/m2 respectively) compared to the control (4.187 kg/m2).
Keywords: Eggplant– Fruit quality – Grafting – Growth – Yield.
Full paper in Arabic: PDF