The Citrus growers are facing a serious problem of decline that is attributed to prevalence of Citrus virus and virus like diseases. The productive life span of Citrus orchards in tropical countries is less than 10 years because of these diseases. Hence, the need for healthy certified quality planting stock is recognized as basic to the establishment of a viable Citrus industry. Use of healthy planting material for establishing the new orchards will help in controlling the diseases and increasing the productivity. Shoot tip grafting (STG) has been proved effective in elimination of diseases and in establishment of healthy Citrus orchards worldwide (viz. Brazil, USA, Spain etc.). Keeping this in view, a comprehensive program based on STG to produce, multiply, maintain and distribute the disease free planting stock to Citrus growers was initiated nearly a decade ago. The program named as Citrus variety improvement program has following functions: 1. Restricted movement of bud wood. 2. Introduction of citrus exotic cultivars and cleaning through STG. 3. Maintenance of healthy mother trees in protected foundation block. 4. Continued testing and growth evaluation. 5. Discarding infected trees. Through successful transfer of STG technology from lab to land so far 4.5 lakhs of certified quality bud grafts of Citrus reticulata Blanco Nagpur mandarin were produced and distributed to Citrus growers which facilitated establishment of around 1500 hectares of healthy Citrus orchards in farmer's fields of Central India. Thus, paving the way for a sound and sustainable Citrus industry. In this paper the authoress presented status of STG based Citrus improvement program being implemented at CCRI, Nagpur, India.
