Notes 10 - Citrus and Dates
Cold tolerance and methods of cold protection
●Wrap trunks of young trees with insulating cloth to protect the graft or bud union
●Bank soil around the lower trunks of young trees to insulate the graft or bud union from
the cold
●Cover the entirety of the young trees during the nighttime hours with a thermal blanket
●Make sure young and mature trees are not nutrient stressed and are well watered before
cold nights
Be able to define the following terms:
Grapefruit is citrus x paradisi
Budding
●The insertion and enclosure of a single vegetative “bud chip” from one plant into an
opening cut with a knife in the bark of another plant to propagate a desired change of
variety or appearance
●Genetic compatibility of the bud ship with the parent plant
Rootstock
●A rootstock is a plant with a healthy, established root system, that has another plant
grafted or budded onto it
●Once graft or bud union is established, the majority of the shoot portion of the rootstock
plant is removed
●2 common rootstocks are used in the Desert Southwest
○Citrus aurantium or Sour Orange
○Citrus Volkameriana or the Volk Miur lemon
Scion
●A detached shoot or twig containing buds from a woody plant that are grafted onto a
rootstock
●Grapefruit tree example
●Graft incompatibility
○Usually graft is more vigorous than scion
Sucker
●Vigorous shoot that grows rapidly from the lower portion of a mature tree or shrub
