Grafting fruit trees is the simple propagation technique to reproduce the best commercial varieties of fruit trees. ORE annually grafts 100,000s of trees and offers training courses to farmers and technicians.

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GRAFTING TRANSFORMS LOW QUALITY FRUIT TREES INTO THE BEST COMMERCIAL VARIETIES

Advantages of Grafting: Grafting fruit trees enables you to clone the commercial qualities of a particular fruit variety on another tree - whereas the quality of the fruit from trees grown from seed can be highly variable. Also, grafted trees come into production much earlier than trees grown from seeds - they usually bear fruit within 2-3 years, whereas in the case of trees grown from seed you have to wait 5-10 years before harvesting.

Grafting fruit trees, little known in Haiti in 1985, is today become a preferred propagation technique for fruit trees.

Production ORE uses two major grafting strategies - nursery production and top-grafting trees in the field: Nursery production makes it possible to produce large quantities of seedlings in plastic bags and graft them with commercial varieties. These seedlings are then distributed to farmers for planting in the field and around the home. Top-grafting is the technique used to transform existing low-quality fruit trees, by pruning them and then grafting them with commercial varieties. This activity is implemented by teams of locally trained grafting technicians who go from one locality to another, grafting the farmers' trees. Top-worked trees generally bear fruit with the grafted varieties during the next one or two seasons.		Budwood from a commercial varietiy mango has been grafted onto low quality variety

Since 1985, ORE been involved in grafted fruit tree production. ORE has grafted more than 1,000,000 commercial quality fruit trees to date and has trained over 500 technicians from over 40 organizations throughout the country in grafting techniques. ORE has been involved in high value tree propagation, production, post-harvest and marketing - in particular by assisting farmers with post harvest activities, including shipment of fruits to market in cases.		Grafting, which was little known in Haiti before 1985, has been extensively disseminated through training sessions througout the country.

Post harvest training, marketing initiatives and the introduction of plastic cases to safely transport fruits to market: A large percentage of the fruit production in Haiti is lost due to poor picking, handling and transportation. Fruit losses can be due fruits being picked before they reach maturity, poor picking techniques, being carried loading sites in inappropriate bags and baskets resulting in additional scaring and bruising, and being transported in trucks in the baskets or open bins. The introduction of plastic cases has reduced losses from as high as 60% to less than 5%.		For over a decade ORE has been promoting the use of plastic cases to transport fruits to market. The results have been dramatic increases in profits for farmers. ORE is working with a federation of producer cooperatives who are succesfully marketing fruits in Port-au-Prince and for export.

THE ADVANTAGES OF TOP-GRAFTING EXISTING TREES

Low quality trees, grown from discarded seeds, are found in abundance throughout the countryside, but their fruit has little commercial value. It is estimated that less than 25% of Haiti's fruit trees are of acceptable commercial quality. Low quality trees are being systematically cut down for sale as fuel and wood products with devastating effects on the environment. Top-grafting these trees is a very effective method of transforming them into commercial quality fruit trees. The high income from the sale of the fruits, generally protects top-worked trees from the widespread tree-cutting that has devastated Haiti's ecology. They provide an important source of revenue and at the same time help to safeguard the environment.

The photos above demonstrate the fate of a noncommercial mango (left) that was turned into charcoal. A similar tree (right) that was transformed by the project’s top-grafting program into a lucrative asset for its owner. This emphasizes the environmental as well as economic value of providing farmers with improved tree crops.

Since 1985, the Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment
has developed and operated fruit tree grafting and crop improvement programs in rural Haiti.
During those years several international agencies have generously provided the funding that made it possible to maintain continuity of our development projects. These include USAID, the European Union, the Canadian Embassy, Inter-American Development Bank and other contributors.

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