Sivanadyan K

Nurseries are specially established blocks of small areas on rubber plantations to raise plants either as planting materials to be transplanted later in the field or for the purpose of vegetative propagation. Various types of advanced planting materials can be grown and prepared in nurseries namely: budded stumps', stumped buddings and soil cored plantings - these nurseries are commonly referred to as ground nurseries - or polybag plants in polybag nurseries. Since its inception, some 10 years ago, polybag planting for rubber has never been popular because of various agronomic limitations and the technique has been adopted only on a limited scale to raise budded stumps in polybags for about two months after cutback before final transplanting. However, from recent work, it is evident that with proper agronomic inputs, plants can be directly raised to an advanced stage in polybags and transplanted to the field. When plants are raised for either brown or green budwood sticks, these nurseries are termed as budwood nurseries or source bush nurseries.