Grafting is used for two principal reasons: most fruit trees don’t come true to seed (seeds from a McIntosh apple won’t grow into McIntosh trees) and cuttings don’t root easily. The technique of grafting is used to join a piece of vegetative wood (the scion) from a tree we wish to propagate to a rootstock.

Why do fruit trees need to be grafted?

Grafting and budding are commonly used to propagate most fruit and nut tree cultivars. … Grafting a plant whose roots are prone to a soil disease onto a rootstock that is resistant to that disease would allow that plant to grow successfully where it would otherwise have problems.

Is grafting necessary for fruit trees?

We have to graft (or otherwise clone) apples and pears in order to maintain the desired traits of a particular tree’s fruit. The ancients figured out, probably quickly, that you could preserve the traits of a particular plant by grafting a piece of it (the scion) onto another plant (the rootstock or stock).