This topic was very interesting to me because Jaboticabas are delicious but can take a long time to fruit. Many people also want to keep our trees small so early fruiting in Jaboticaba can have multiple benefits. By focusing energy on fruit production, resources will be pulled away from vegetative growth.
The use of girdling or cincturing is well documented and the mechanism is pretty well understood. By blocking the energy produced in the leaves, hormonal signals favor flowering over vegetative growth but one needs to time this girdling in order to maximize its potential to induce flowering and increase retention of fruit.
I have first hand experience with early flowering caused by a girdled branch when I put on an air layer on my Kohala Longan tree. The branch that was air layered flowered when nearby branches grew vegetatively.
In order to test out this technique, I used a paperclip to girdle my in ground Sabara Jaboticaba which is flowering for the first time. The flowers buds are just starting to pop out on the thickest part of the trunk which is about 1.75-2 inches in diameter. I decided to girdle branches that are higher up and much thinner because I feel these thinner branches have very little chance of flowering this year or even the next couple of years.
My Sabara trunk with its first flowers
Small girdled branch about pencil to sharpie thick
Same tree but a little higher up, this branch is slightly thicker than the first
This is a different tree. This is a double rootstock Sabara that is growing about twice as fast as one on single rootstock but it has never flowered. This tree has not even peeled yet, or not that I recall. I believe this tree will likely not flower until it is around 2 inches in diameter like my first tree. I girdled this one branch about sharpie thickness.
Here is the scar where I innarched the two trees together
Here is the portion of the trunk directly above the healed union of my approach graft
I purposefully chose smaller branches that are less likely to succeed because this is likely more beneficial if the technique works.
Has anyone had success with this technique yet? I'll keep everyone updated.
Simon