The objective of this work was to establish a protocol for early grafting in sugar apple seedlings developed in small capacity plastic tubettes as a substitute for the traditional grafting system that uses 12 months-old seedlings developed in plastic bags. The work was carried out with three budding/grafting methods (chip budding, split graft and side-stub graft) and four rootstocks ages (3, 5, 7 and 9 months). The rootstocks were evaluated for 9 months with regard to the following variables: length of the plant, diameter of stem, leaf number and leaf area. Each budding/grafting procedure was evaluated after 30 days and the percentage of union. The rootstocks produced in bigger tubetes showed to be more developed for all variables during the evaluated period. The success of the union did not vary between the two types of containers. The split graft revealed to be the best method as it presented a 96,69% union success in the early 3 month-old rootstocks. The method side-stub graft presented similar percentage rates from 5 months-old rootstocks. The chip budding method initially presented a low success union rate (<50%), but it increased at each new budding date and reached 80% union success in 7 months-old rootstocks.
sweetsop; custard apple; saramuya; propagation
