Tapping the potentials of topworking

To fruit tree growers who have had the misfortune of getting inferior seedlings, take heart! If you didn’t know it yet, help is available in the form of a tried and tested technology called topworking. Propagated for decades now by pomologist Bernardo O. Dizon, it is guaranteed to put sunshine into your failed fruit farming business.

Here’s how topworking is done in undesirable mango – this can also be applied to other fruit trees – to induce the trees’ best potential in production:

1) At the start of the rainy season (if there’s irrigation in the plantation this can be done anytime) cut the tree trunk in this way. One foot above the ground for a tree less than five years old or the trunk is the size of a man’s lower leg. If the tree is already 10-year old or the size of a man’s body, the cut trunk should be about two to three feet in height. The cut should be smooth and the bark around the stump should be intact.

2) Paint the cut portion or wound with alkitran or any other ordinary house paint. This will protect the wound from infection.

3) When topworking is done during summer, water the plant.

4) Choose six to eight branchlets near and around the cut and remove others around the trunk; remove also branchlets that will eventually grow. This will make the remaining branchlets grow faster.

5) After a few months when the branchlets are each over one foot in length graft or inarch corresponding number of "carabao" mango scions into the branchlets of the original tree (other superior varieties like the millennium and Nenita can be used for scions.) As everyone in the country knows, "carabao" mango is the best tasting variety that is also well known in other countries. The bigger the trunk the bigger the scions (four-five feet) to be inarched into multiple rootstocks (double or triple rootstocks). Tie the inarched ends.

6) All growing branchlets outside of the six to eight already grafted should be cut.

7) Two to three months after grafting, cut the upper portion of the original branchlets of the old tree. This way the support to the growing carabao mango scions will be strengthened

8) Fertilize according to the needs of the new plants.

9) Pinch the end of the carabao scions for them to develop more branches without growing taller.

10) Remember, only the six to eight grafted branches should be nurtured while removing intruding new branchlets.

This technology has been demonstrated several times with excellent results. Inferior types of mango trees – like pahutan, Indian mango, apple mango etc. – have been made to bear luscious tasting "carabao" mango, and very prolific (hitik sa bunga) at that. The new tree will be early fruiting which will start to bear fruits in three years.

This unique planting technology can also be applied to other fruit trees: longan, rambutan, lychees, lanzones (grafted with scions of longkong, the high quality variety from Thailand), native pummelos (grafted with scions of Magallanes and Nenita which are varieties with excellent eating quality) and many others.

Bernie Dizon, the orchard expert who conducts farmers’ training seminar across the country also maintains techno-demo fruit farms at the Central Luzon State University (CLSU) in Munoz, Nueva Ecija, the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Nature Center along North Avenue in Quezon City, UP Bliss Economic Garden in Diliman, Quezon City and Tiaong, Quezon Province.

At the Ninoy Parks and Wildlife and UP Bliss Garden, Dizon maintains nurseries which can provide farmers and government agriculture program with thousands of seedlings of Guimaras mango, the queen of Philippine mangoes and the toast of the country’s fruit exports. Other seedling are also available.

Dizon it was who made possible the growing of high value fruits of the south of Luzon: among them, pummelo and durian. Dizon also made possible the planting of exotic fruits in the country: among them lychees, apple makopa, mangosteen, berba, abiu, duku lanzones, millennium and chokanan mango Thai varieties. He even developed a latexless jackfruit.

Given the potential of orchard farming the Philippines can outperform its neighbors with the right policies and government assistance and, of course, farming technologies like Dizon’s.