Recent Advances and Prospects for Dragon Fruit (Hylocereus spp.) Plant Propagation Techniques

Abstract

Dragon fruit (Hylocereus spp.) is a recently introduced super fruit in India, gaining popularity both in rural and urban areas because of its attractive colour, delicious taste, and high nutritive and medicinal values. It is adaptable to humid as well as semi-arid tropical and subtropical conditions. The growing acceptance of this fruit along with its enormous medicinal and antioxidant properties has increased the demand for its cultivation followed by quality planting materials in the desired quantity. Propagation of Dragon fruit can be done by both micropropagation sexual via seeds and asexual methods via stem cuttings, grafting, and micropropagation. In this review, attempts have been made to cover various fruit propagation methods along with other related crop features about which there is relatively scanty information. The assessment also attempted to highlight the prospective propagation locations for dragon fruit, which calls for additional study to produce more information and advance crop propagation methods.