Development, flowering and morphoanatomical analysis of yellow passion fruit grafted onto wild species of the genus passiflora

Abstract

Soil diseases reduce the lifetime of the yellow passion fruit crops, forcing the practice of shifting cultivation. The use of tolerant rootstocks could help control premature demise of plants, providing healthier crops, uniform and long-lived. This paper has aimed quantify the influence of two species of wild passionfruit Passiflora mucronata Lam and P. gibertii NE Brown as rootstocks on the agronomic characteristics of yellow passion fruit. The morphological and anatomical analysis of graft region highlighted the cellular redifferentiation resulting in the connection of the graft and the rootstock hypo and epibioto tissues. The changes in characteristics such as plant height, number of nodes, occurrence rate of nodes, accumulation of thermal units to flowering also discussed. It was observed that P. mucronata as rootstock positively influenced the number of nodes, plant height, the number of flowers and the rate of occurrence of nodes. The wild species used as rootstock developed flower buds prematurely. The specie P. mucronata showed the best performance as rootstock.