In order to determinate the age effect on soursop tree grafting, an experiment was carried out at the Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Brazil during the period of July to December 2001. The performance of four ages of the rootstocks for soursop tree was evaluated in 40, 55, 70 and 85 days after emergence. The rootstocks utilized were obtained from seeds of the soursop tree "Morada", which were grafted with the soursop tree "Gigante das Alagoas". The grafting utilized was by top cleft graft methods and the experimental design utilized was randomized blocks with five replicates and sixteen plants per experimental unit. The evaluations consisted of percentage of grafting technique success at 60 days after grafting, stem diameter and height of the soursop seedlings for each ages. It was verified that the percent of success of the graft increased with the rootstocks ages. The age of 85 days after emergence showed a better performance than the others, presenting 82% of grafting success. At 40 days after emergence, there was no success and only after 55 days of emergence and with stem diameter above 2,21mm was obtained success of the grafting.
cleft graft; asexual propagation; seedlings; tropical fruit; rootstocks
