Let [Formula: see text] be a connected graph and [Formula: see text] be the adjacency matrix of [Formula: see text]. Suppose that [Formula: see text] are the eigenvalues of [Formula: see text]. In this paper, we first give a graft transformation on the spectral radius of graphs and then as their application, we determine the extremal graphs with maximum and minimum spectral radii among all clique trees. Furthermore, we also determine the unique graph with maximum spectral radius among all block graphs by using different methods.