Grafting

Grafting or graftage is a horticultural technique whereby tissues from one plant are inserted into those of another so that the two sets of vascular tissues may join together. This vascular joining is called inosculation. The technique is most commonly used in asexual propagation of commercially grown plants for the horticultural and agricultural trades.

In most cases, one plant is selected for its roots and this is called the stock or rootstock. The other plant is selected for its stems, leaves, flowers, or fruits and is called the scion or cion. The scion contains the desired genes to be duplicated in future production by the stock/scion plant.

In stem grafting, a common grafting method, a shoot of a selected, desired plant cultivar is grafted onto the stock of another type. In another common form called bud grafting, a dormant side bud is grafted onto the stem of another stock plant, and when it has inosculated successfully, it is encouraged to grow by pruning off the stem of the stock plant just above the newly grafted bud.

Propagation of grapevines

The propagation of grapevines is an important consideration in commercial viticulture and winemaking. Grapevines, most of which belong to the Vitis vinifera family, produce one crop of fruit each growing season with a limited life span for individual vines. While some centenarian old vine examples of grape varieties exist, most grapevines are between the ages of 10 and 30 years. As vineyard owners seek to replant their vines, a number of techniques are available which may include planting a new cutting that has been selected by either clonal or mass (massal) selection. Vines can also be propagated by grafting a new plant vine upon existing rootstock or by layering one of the canes of an existing vine into the ground next to the vine and severing the connection when the new vine develops its own root system.

Grafting (decision trees)

Grafting is the process of adding nodes to inferred decision trees to improve the predictive accuracy. A decision tree is a graphical model that is used as a support tool for decision process.

Introduction

Once the decision tree is constructed, then the new branches that can be added productively to the tree are identified. Then they are grafted to the existing tree to improve the decision making process. Pruning and Grafting are complementary methods to improve the decision tree in supporting the decision. Pruning allows cutting parts of decision trees to give more clarity and Grafting adds nodes to the decision trees to increase the predictive accuracy. To achieve grafting new branches can be added in the place of a single leaf or graft within leaves.

Illustration

The information required is given in the form of a chart as,

The nodes and leaves can be identified from the given information and the decision trees are constructed. One such decision tree is as follows,