The effect of grafting on pollen fertility and seed production of diploid interspecific hybrid and tetraploid eggplant genotypes

: Solanum melongena is susceptible to diverse diseases and parasites, in particular the wilts (bacterial, Fusarium and Verticillium ), nematodes, and some insects. Solanum torvum is robust to Verticillium and some bacterial wilts and root-knot nematode. It was reported that interspecific hybrid plants originated out of the hybridization of these species were sterile. In our previous studies that have been carried out to overcome this interspecific hybridization barrier, only from Faselis F 1 that was used as the female parent, many interspecific hybrid seeds were obtained and 9.07% of the seeds grew into plants in vitro. The percentage of pollen viability and germination of tetraploid interspecific hybrid (amphidiploid) genotypes that have been produced by in vitro colchicine treatment, were 6.8 and 3.4 fold of its source diploid genotype, respectively. However, the increment was not high enough to overcome the interspecific hybridization barrier between S. torvum and S. melongena . In this study, the changes in pollen fertility of diploid interspecific hybrids and tetraploid plants, which have grafted on Pala or Faselis F 1 , were investigated. Pollen viability and germination percentage in diploid genotypes were not affected by grafting, although they increased significantly (51.54% and 119.73%, respectively) in tetraploid genotypes by grafting. It was determined that the fertile diploid rootstock used for the tetraploid genotypes that produced by chromosome doubling from cultured eggplants could increase the number of seeds per fruit. It was concluded that some fertile diploid varieties can be used as rootstocks in order to increase pollen viability, germination rate and seed yield of tetraploid genotypes with low pollen yield obtained from cultivated eggplant by chromosome doubling.