Raising a grape garden on rootstock like Dogridge is a new concept. It has become very popular in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Northern Karnataka. The use of rootstocks like Dogridge helps in mitigating the twin problems of salinity and drought. In addition, Dogridge can also take care of nematodes in the soil, simultaneously providing excellent nutritional support to the grafted scion.
Compared to gardens grown on their own roots which can start yielding in one-and-half-years, the rootstock gardens take six to eight months more as they have to be first planted in the field and then grafted with the suitable scion variety after six months. This delay in getting the first crop is unavoidable, but is more than made up when the grafted vine starts yielding.Taking the major expenditure components into consideration, like digging of trenches, cost of manures/fertilizers, training structures, drip systems and other plant protection chemicals, etc., for raising a successful rootstock garden, additionally about Rs.6,000/acre are spent as cost of nursery plants and grafting charges. When the rootstock gardens starts yielding, not only there is 20-25% increase in yield/acre, there is also an improvement in terms of quality of produce. Just to cite an example, those gardens which are planned for producing fresh grapes for Europe market, the recovery percentage is nearly 60-70% of the total produce whereas, in the traditional own rooted gardens, it can be as low as 40%. Even in the gardens planned for making raisins, the recovery is 20% more compared to those on own rooted gardens.
In addition the above virtues, the rootstock Dogridge has played an important key role in many grape growing regions of Maharashtra and Karnataka this year where drought situation worsened due to failure of monsoon.