Grafting is an effective management strategy in watermelon crop against soil borne pathogens. Carolina strongback (SB) rootstock used for grafting, is resistant to both fusarium wilt and root knot nematodes which are devastating soil borne pest of watermelon. In addition, recent studies have shown higher vigour of SB grafted plants than regular nursery plants. However, grafted watermelon nursery is 4-5 times more expensive than regular nursery which leads to reluctance among farmers for adoption of this effective management strategy. Further, recent trials showed that grafted plant bear fruits 7-10 days later than regulate plants leading to farmers losing early profitable watermelon market. To fill these gaps for informed adoption of SB grafted nursery, a field experiment was conducted at Blackville SC with the objective to evaluate the optimum transplanting time and density of SB grafted watermelons nursery to have equivalent fruit yield and harvesting window to that of regular nursery. The experiment comprised of three transplanting times and four transplant densities in a split plot design. We will evaluate the impact of transplanting time and transplanting density on watermelon fruit yield, fruit quality, number of fruits per plant, periodic fruit harvesting yield and plant vigour.
