The mangosteen seeds right after the retreat of the fruit present great amount of pulp stucked to the tegument. This rich material in sugar favors the diseases proliferation, which interfere in the germination when the seeds are not properly clean. With objective of studying the effect of the different times of fermentation on the germination of the seeds, a experiment was realized, with five treatments 0, 24, 48, 72 and 96 hours of fermentation in water. The experiment was conducted following as a completely randomized design and treatments were replicated four times with 50 seeds each, sowed in trays containing as substratum a mixture of sand and sawdust in the proportion of 1:1, under environment temperature 26 ± 2ºC and relative humidity of 86 ± 3%. The following tests were used for evaluating the seeds: germination test, emergence speed, average germination time. The number of normal seedling was assessed on a daily basis. The results evidenced that the fermentation of the mangosteen seeds for 48 hours provided better germination percentage (86%), differing significantly from the other treatments.
germination; mean germination time; Clusiaceae
