The cagaita tree is a native plant of the Cerrado and adapted to the conditions of this biome, having as main characteristics the ability of growing and surviving in nutrient-poor soils and under a rainfall pattern with a pronounced low precipitation period. This is a rustic, ornamental, and highly fire-resistant plant. Its fruits are edible raw and used in many different types of processed foods. However, little is known about how long this species takes to enter the reproductive phase. This study is intended to assess the initial fruiting of cagaita plants cultivated in the experimental area of the School of Agronomy of the Federal University of Goiás, Goiânia, Brazil, between 2003 and 2008, when the cagaita plants were five to ten years old. For the experiment, fruits were collected from ten areas of the Southeast region of the State of Goiás and planted in a randomized block design with one plant per plot in four blocks, at 6 m x 6 m spacing. The cagaita plants showed a great lack of uniformity to begin to fruit. In the fifth year after planted out, only 5.2% of the plants began to fruit and after ten years, this number increased to 55.7%. Among these plants, only 6.8% fruited during at least four years of observation. Only four plants entered the fruiting phase and remained so during the six years of observation. The number of fruits per plant is very low; only 3.4% of the plants produced more than 200 fruits in the tenth year. The study showed that the number of fruits tends to increase as the plant gets older.
Cerrado fruit; Myrtaceae; productivity
