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Over the past 40 years, the world’s agricultural systems have been changing in response to population pressures. Population growth and local economics are driving both the intensification of agriculture and its extensification in to the marginal lands, where risks of crop failure and environmental degradation are high. Horticulture based production systems are now considered to be the most ideal strategy to provide food, nutrition and income security to the people. Integration of annual crops with fruit trees yields multiple outputs that ensure production and income generation. The importance of horticulture in improving the productivity of the land, generating employment, improving economic conditions of the farmers and entrepreneurs, enhancing exports and above all, providing nutritional security to the desert dwellers, can hardly be overemphasized. Horticulture has assumed significant importance in the crop diversification in recent years, which has become essential to arrest serious land degradation and enhancing the farm income. In fact, the horticulture has also gained commercial importance with a very significant share in the economy of the region. Diversification of agriculture from traditional land use with predominantly cereal/legume-based cropping systems to more productive and remunerative has become a milestone to be achieved. Horticulture provides the few viable and most attractive alternative land use system. The improved cultivars of prevalent fruit crops with their propagation method, spacing and yield potential was worked out during past four decades. Plant propagation is the branch of horticulture which deals with the deliberate production of new plants using various starter materials (e.g. organs, tissues), including their intensive but temporary care. It is primarily practiced to produce seedlings or clones of nursery crops for out-planting, or for planting in containers for display or decor or other uses.

Propagation of Horticultural Plants: Arid and Semi-Arid Regions deals with the propagation of fruit and plantation crops, of spice and medicinal plants. The book is aimed at post-graduate horticultural students, researchers and horticulturists.