Plant grafting involves attaching part of a plant to the shoot of another. It has been used in agriculture for thousands of years. It improves the growth of certain crops and eradicates diseases, such as in apples, citrus fruits, vines. But this technique is not supposed to work for an important group of plants: the monocotyledons (or monocots), of which the coconut palm is a part.
Monocotyledons lack a tissue called the vascular cambium, which helps grafts heal and fuse together in many other plants.
Recently, researchers at the University of Cambridge have found an approach that makes it possible to graft monocots. They extracted a form of embryonic plant tissue from inside a monocot plant seed and applied it to potential graft sites between two monocot specimens belonging to the same species – wheat, for example.
In the case of the coconut palm, it is possible to dig up and replant large trees. Wouldn't it also be possible to graft them? You should try the technique described in the diagram above.
©R. Bourdeix, 2021, section HCNT