Commercial Importance of Adventitious Rooting to Horticulture

Abstract

Vegetative or clonal reproduction is the most important propagation method used for the commercial production of many, if not most, horticultural crops (ornamentals, fruits, nuts and vegetables). One of the major advances in early agriculture was the discovery that important food crops such as figs, grapes and olives could be regenerated by inserting the base of their woody stems into the ground to induce the formation of adventitious roots and, hence, new plants. Because clonal reproduction may not occur naturally or at least easily in various plant species, the history of horticulture has evolved to a large extent around the development of new technologies for vegetative propagation. More elaborate propagation facilities and commercial asexual propagation techniques have continued to evolve to extend the process to more and more plants at lower costs per unit of production.