Potential for regeneration and propagation from cut seeds of Eugenia (Myrtaceae) tropical tree species

Eugenia is naturally found in most of the tropical Brazilian vegetation, frequently in high occurrence of species but low frequency of individuals. Furthermore, several species of Eugenia have great interest because of their pharmacological properties, ornamental characteristics or the production of commercial fruits. These seeds show high germinability at shedding: however, only a small number of seeds is produced by each plant resulting in several problems for both biodiversity conservation programs and propagation on a commercial scale. Recent work has shown that in spite of being monoembryonic, the seeds of some domesticated Eugenia species can regenerate the germinability after cutting, but this new behaviour was not investigated for non-domesticated Eugenia species. In the present work, seeds of non-domesticated species of Eugenia, E. cerasiflora, E. umbelliflora and E. pruinosa, were evaluated as for its regeneration capacity after cutting. Results corroborated the high capacity of resume germinability of these seeds after being cut. This could also be important for natural propagation since a series of germination could be consecutively initiated. The capacity of regaining germinability after a failure in the first germination could be considered an alternative way to amplify seed longevity.