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Create Precision Grafting Systems for Enhanced Plant Performance

Grafting combines different plant varieties to improve performance, but traditional grafting is labor-intensive, has variable success rates, and limits the scale of grafting programs. The challenge is developing precision grafting systems that can achieve consistent graft success while enabling large-scale grafting operations for improved plant performance. This requires innovations in robotic grafting, healing environment control, compatibility prediction, and automated graft management. Current grafting relies on skilled manual labor with variable success rates, while the benefits of grafting are not fully utilized due to labor and scale limitations. Technical barriers include developing robotic systems that can perform precise cuts and joins, creating optimal healing environments for different species combinations, and predicting graft compatibility for novel combinations. Success would expand the use of grafting for plant improvement, reduce labor requirements, improve graft success rates, and enable large-scale grafting programs that could enhance plant performance across many horticultural crops.

Applied Sciences, Specialized Agriculture, Horticulture