I also tried, to root Jaboticaba cuttings, and can confirm it is not easy!
Before start with my experiments, I've read a few things on the web, to have one idea, with what I was dealing, and ended up with a lot of diferent forms to do it, but none seemed to be really 100% guaranteed. So I decided to try it in a few diferent ways (those that seemed to me to be the best), and for the first experience, I've done, I get an incredible success, of 0%.
So I had revised a few things and decided to try it again, and this time I get a better result of 0%.
I read a bit more about it, and tried it a third time, and finally I get one rooted, out of about 20. And this one was the one I used the most unsuspicious method... I simply take a small cutting, no more than 15cm, and less than 5mm diameter, and put it in a muddy terrain, where there's allways some water in the soil (almost a swamp), and about 9months later, after having lost every single leave, it has set a new shoot from the soil level, I let it stay for another month or so, and then my curiosity made me dig it to see if there were roots, and I confirmed success.
After that I've read a few more things, and discovered, that the main problem is that right after cutting the stems from the mother tree, it's sap, and bark start to oxidate, and this oxidation acts as a root inhibitor, and this is one of the main causes, for these type of plants, dont get rooted cuttings. One technique to avoid this, is having everything ready, for placing it in the soil right after cutting it from the mother tree; and in the impossibility of this, use a bucket, or similar with water and some lemon juice (as it acts as an antioxidant) to put the cuttings on it and transport it that way; then, before planting it, cut about 2 inches, of the base of the cuttings, so you have a fresh area to set roots.
