Recently, the team led by Professor Jia Liming from the College of Forestry's Forest Cultivation discipline at Beijing Forestry University made significant strides with the publication of their review paper "Advances in Understanding the Graft Healing Mechanism: A Review of Factors and Regulatory Pathways" in the prestigious journal Horticulture Research (top tier in the Chinese Academy of Sciences' first quartile, with a 2023 impact factor of 7.6). The paper delves into the intricate regulatory mechanisms involved in plant graft healing, incorporating insights from morphology, physiology, and molecular biology. This research offers valuable insights into how plants successfully graft together to form optimal grafted chimeras.

Grafting is a widely used technique for asexual plant reproduction, especially in agriculture and forestry. This procedure is used to shorten the seedling period, improve the structure of scion branches, and help plants adapt to difficult environments. Although grafting has numerous benefits, several obstacles remain to be overcome. The connection between scion and rootstock is regulated by various factors, including phytohormones and molecular mechanisms, which are crucial for graft healing. This review provides an overview of recent advances in the field of grafting, with a specific focus on the factors and regulatory pathways that influence graft healing. The ultimate goal is to aid understanding of how to achieve successful grafting between plants and create desirable grafting chimeras. An overview of the latest developments in plant grafting is provided, covering aspects related to morphology, physiology, and molecular biology. Research directions in polyploid breeding and long-distance transfer of small molecules in grafted plants are also discussed in the paper.

The paper's first author is Wang Lixian, a Ph.D. student from the College of Forestry. The corresponding authors are Professor Jia Liming and Associate Professor Chen Zhong. Dr. Liu Jiming, a postdoctoral researcher from Nanyang Technological University, also contributed to this research.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 32371857 and No. 32071793), the Special Foundation for National Science and Technology Basic Research Program of China (No. 2019FY100803), and the innovation and application of new Sapindus species for soap and efficient breeding technology (No. 2023 N3005).

Paper link: https://doi.org/10.1093/hr/uhae175

Written by Wang Lixian and Chen Zhong
Translated and edited by Song He
Reviewed by Yu Yangyang