with the fruit pawpaw. Pawpaw is a tree native to Kentucky and KSU has a very large pawpaw research program (Pomper et al., 2009; Pomper et al., 2010). In talks with research director Dr. Kirk Pomper I asked, “Why did you decide to go with Pawpaw instead of any other fruit?” His response, “It’s a fascinating fruit that is very tasteful and something that is new to chefs who are always looking for something new or different.” Pawpaws are traditionally grafted using chip budding, but whip and tongue is another possible method (Pomper et al., 2009; Stoltz and Strang, 2005). For this experiment, my hypothesis was that if we use chip budding to graft the desired fruit, then it would have a better outcome than whip and tongue.
I used two types of grafting in this research: the chip budding and whip and tongue methods. Chip budding involves using one little bud from the plant you want to clone and the other method involves using a stick of one-year old wood of the same variety. My early advice and experiences quickly demonstrated that chip budding is the least complicated method. Some of the materials used included a sharp knife, pawpaw plants, para film, pawpaw rootstock and pawpaw scionwood. Para film is a stretchy plastic that holds the graft together and helps hold in moisture. To complete the chip budding method we cut the bud out and made it the same size as a cut into another pawpaw tree, secured the bud to the cut tree, wrapped it with para film, and cut off only a few of leaves from the top to allow for continued photosynthesis. To complete the whip and tongue method, we took a whole stick from last year's growth and put it on another pawpaw tree, similar to chip budding, but also cutting the other tree in half. Then we made a "Z" cut into the stick while making sure it was attached to the roots. We then wrapped it in para film and put both the chip budding and whip and tongue grafts into the greenhouse and waited. In total, eight grafts for each method were completed.
After six days, I came back to check the progress. The chip budding method was doing extremely well as four of the samples propagated while the whip and tongue method produced only one. The next day, I came back to look at the results and it looked like all of the chip buddings had taken, while with whip and tongue had only produced a total of two. These results indicate that chip budding was the overall best method for grafting the pawpaw fruit trees and have proven that my hypothesis, that chip budding will give a higher number of successful grafts, was correct.