Professor Hume was right: rootstocks are critical and much is still to be learned. Rootstocks and scions are the foundation of many tree fruit industries of the world. Together, those components establish profitability, but it can be argued that the rootstock is the critical component; otherwise, scions would be grown on their own roots everywhere. There is no precedent for the failure of a cit...

The use of micropropagated trees has been widely extended, since micropropagation is a convenient technique of vegetative propagation that shows a number of interesting advantages, mainly for woody fruit trees. However, only few studies can be found in the literature on the field performance of micropropagated trees. In this work, the performance of different micropropagated fruit-tree rootstoc...

Apple replant disease affects tree nurseries and apple production globally. After repeated planting in the same soil, roots show accumulation of phytoalexins, stunting, blackening. Recently, we showed that nematodes extracted from replanted soil co-extracted microbes triggered these symptoms, while pathogens or plant-parasitic could not explain early development. To identify nematode-microbe co...

Malus baccata (L.) Borkh. is one of the most widely used rootstocks in apple-producing region Northern China. However, early growing season, apple roots are often subjected to suboptimal low root-zone temperatures. The regulatory effects exogenous γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) on both shunt (GABA shunt) and respiratory activity under temperatures remain unknown. To explore physiological basis for ...