Abstract

YESCAS ARREOLA, Elvia et al. Acclimation of Agave americana var. Oaxacensis obtained in vitro. Rev. Mex. Cienc. Agríc [online]. 2016, vol.7, n.4, pp.911-922. ISSN 2007-0934.

Because of the importance of Agave americana variety oaxacensis as raw material for the craftsmanship of mezcal. The growth of 260 micro-propagated plants was evaluated during 245 days having on average: 4.6 leaves, 10.1 cm in the longest leaf (AHML), 8.5 cm in diameter crown (DC) and 20.1 g cm-2 chlorophyll leaf blade (CL). The plants were established according to a completely randomized design with factorial arrangement (4 x 5), using pots of 300 cm3 with four different substrates: sand (1), sand-vermiculite (1:1), sand-peat (1:1) sand and peat-vermiculite (1:1:1), using daily irrigation with five different compositions 1) water and; 2) some aliquot: 25, 50, 75 and 100% of the universal solution Steiner. Each treatment, had ten repetitions of a pot with a silver each. The first 49 days remained in a greenhouse with high relative humidity and solar radiation decreased 50%. The last 196 days under full sunlight greenhouse, ventilation and lower relative humidity. The analysis of variance for the main factors was performed after the first five weeks and at the end of the experiment was performed for all treatments, in addition to the comparison of means (Tukey, p> 0.05. The largest increase in AHML (1.63 cm), number of leaves (NH) (0.81), DC (1.17 cm) and CL (6.50 g cm-2) what caused the sand-peat without fertilizer substrate. The micro- propagated plants are replacing sheets between 35 and 70 days acclimatization.

Keywords : Agave americana var. Oaxacensis L.; chlorophyll; micropropagation; substrate; Steiner solution.