hello everyone! stumbled upon this thread and loved it! great to see there's an ongoing forum about agriculture as it's rare to locate a place where stuff about agriculture can be discussed under one roof just like every other thing else. i used to be an active member in LYN but took a long hiatus until my first job (yes, in the agriculture line) sent me looking for any possible channel of information regarding rubber and oil palm. i see there's relatively little information about rubber and oil palm in this thread. my job at the moment is a supervisor for a rubber nursery. my experience is still somewhat at a young stage like sapling but i would love to share what i know and learn what i yet to know, all under learning purposes, and at the same time getting to know more friends, as the agriculture industry can be rather mundane after some time in it, especially when you're alone

rubber grafting is not an easy job. in fact my first test was a total failure too.
haven't done subsequent test after the first one so i could only speak from experience exchanging conversation with professional grafters (they can graft up to 1000 stocks in a day with 90% success rate ). methods are more or less the same. it's the aspects that you need to take care of, like a larger socket on the stock to accommodate the scion, making sure the underside of scion is free from any object. the budding stick should be kept as fresh as possible during grafting as the success rate deteriorates if exposed under the sun for a long period. if you're re-grafting from the same stock, you should graft on the opposite and on top of the first grafting since the first grafting might cause wounds to its backside. hope it helps in your test tomorrow. good luck!

Hi fellow farmers, what are the adjuvants that go well with foliar fertilizer, say Bayfolan?

My bad I was in a hurry to post that just now. I'm trying to experiment adjuvants with foliar fertilizer, my target is rubber sapling. From what I've gathered penetrating agent (penetrant) seems to work well with foliar fertilizer as it enhances the ability of fertilizer to penetrate the surface of foliage. I also have a wetting agent at my disposal but I'd only use it during wet seasons to minimize losses. Kinda like your idea of spraying at the underside of leaf. Will check out which side of rubber sapling leaf has the bigger pores lol.

I'm afraid I'm just a layman at the moment as I've to do a tad of research of all the terms you said to get an inkling of what they're hahaha. I use Kenpo 888 as the wetting agent. My boss told me it's more of a sticker but I feel it's more like wetting agent cum spreader after reading the labels. I shall check out the Halex on my next visit to the agrishop. Might be of a use. How many seedlings do you want? I'm more on the production rather than marketing now but if you're looking to buy I can inform the secretary about your order. My nursery is in Beaufort and yes you may come visit any time

Haha that's very kind of you. In fact I sprayed one of the plot nearing one month old into planting with foliar fertilizer yesterday coupled with Kenpo 888 since it showered the night before. It's my first time using the foliar fertilizer so don't know what'll be in store for me, will just wait and see

No problem mate, any fine day I'll be here hehe. Ya born and hail from KL ahaha and I'm going back on 21st!

the purpose of grafting is to uniform your plant into a desirable characteristic of your choice and eventually yield a better result after years of planting. if you just sow from raw seed, you might end up getting myriad kind of mature rubber tree (oversized/slender trunk, susceptible to diseases, low latex yielding etc). actually there are more pros than cons in getting your plant grafted before planting them into the field. one simple example (grafted VS non-grafted) is you have the option to graft the seedling into the clone that is suitable based on your land geography (say hilly land, choose clone that is wind-resistant to prevent tree from breaking off), and if you just sow the raw seed, you have little control of what it will become. as an extra note, grafting is not an easy process, so if you want to save the hassle just purchase the seedlings from any nursery.

how come the sapling grow like out of place? the one of the right, looks weird to me..
i'm back in Sabah already