The soil born diseases cause expressive losses in passion fruit crops in Brazil. The use of resistant rootstocks is an alternative to control these diseases. Several wild species of Passifloraceae have presented resistance to soil born pathogens, but their utilization as rootstock from seeds has been limited mainly by differences of thickness between the rootstock and the graft of the commercial cultivars. These limitations could be reduced using herbaceous cuttings as rootstock. In these experiments, herbaceous cuttings has been collected from Passiflora setacea (source EC-PS 1), P. nitida (source EC-PN 1), P. caerulea (source EC-PC 1), P. actinia (source EC-PA 1) and a F1 hybrid between P. setacea x P. edulis f. flavicarpa (commercial cultivars) and treated with acetic naphthalene acid (ANA) at 500 mg/L and kept in moisture greenhouse. The graftings (lateral grafting) were made at 40, 55 and 70 days after the collecting and planting of the cuttings. The evaluations were made at 145 and 150 days after the cutting planting determining the percentages of living grafts and sprouting grafts and length of the sprout graft. The grafting on rooted-herbaceous cutting of P. nitida and F1 hybrid was technically viable for passion fruit-seedling production.
Soil born pathogens control; asexual propagation; rootstock; Passiflora edulis f. flavicarpa
