Establishment of scion bank:

• Production of scion sticks

• The Scion Bank should be established with the recommended varieties of the region.
• The plants should be panted in a closer spacing of 4mx4m , in order to get continuous supply of scions.
• It should be fertilized with recommended quantity of NPK during monsoon and tender shoots should be protected by timely sprays of insecticides.
• The flower panicles should be cut off in order to get more number of scions.
• The plants in the scion bank should be maintained by heading back the top to a height of 1.5 m from ground level and by pruning the dried branches.
• Pruning of trees may be carried out annually during September –October in the scion bank.



• Variety of scion and precuring



• Choose non-flowered, 3-5 month old lateral shoots of current season’s growth.
• The chosen shoots should be about 10-12 cm long, straight, uniformly round with pencil thickness, brown coloured having dormant plumpy terminal buds.
• The top 4-5 leaves should be dark green in colour indicating proper maturity of the scion sticks.
• The chosen scion sticks should be precured by clipping off leaf blades, leaving petiole.
• The scion sticks can be detached from the mother tree after 8-10 days, before they sprout and utilized for grafting.



• Collection of scion stick



• The precured scion sticks should be separated early in the morning to avoid desiccation and its length should not less than 10cm.
• Soon after separation from the mother tree, scion sticks should be dipped in water and placed in a polythene bag of 100 guage thickness and brought to the nursery shed for grafting.
• The scion sticks wrapped in sphagnum moss cloth and placed in a polythene bag of 100 guage can be kept for 3-4 days and used for grafting, if necessary.