Agave tequilana

Agave tequilana, commonly called blue agave, tequila agave, mezcal or maguey is an agave plant that is an important economic product of Jalisco state in Mexico, due to its role as the base ingredient of tequila, a popular distilled spirit.

The tequila agave is a native of Jalisco, favoring the high altitudes of more than 1,500 m and sandy soil. Commercial and wild agaves have very different life cycles. Both start as a large succulent, with spiky fleshy leaves, which can grow to over two meters in length.

Wild agaves sprout a shoot when about five years old, which grows into a stem up to five metres and topped with yellow flowers.

The flowers are pollinated by a native bat (Leptonycteris nivalis) and produce several thousand seeds per plant. The plant then dies. The shoots are removed when about a year old from commercial plants to allow the heart to grow larger.

The plants are then reproduced by planting these shoots; this has led to a considerable loss of genetic diversity in cultivated blue agave.

It is rare for one kept as a houseplant to flower; nevertheless, a fifty year old blue agave in Boston grew a 10 m (30 ft) stalk requiring a hole in the greenhouse roof and flowered in the summer of 2006.

Tequila is produced by removing the heart of the plant in its twelfth year, normally weighing between 35–90 kg (77–198 lb). This heart is stripped of leaves and heated to remove the sap, which is fermented and distilled.

Other beverages like mezcal and pulque are also produced from blue and other agaves by different methods (though still using the sap) and are regarded as more traditional

Researchers from Mexico's University of Guadalajara believe blue agave contains compounds that may be useful in carrying drugs to the intestines to treat diseases, such as Crohn's disease and colitis.

As agave production has moved to an industrial scale since the end of 1980s, diseases and pests, collectively referred to as TMA (tristeza y muerte de agave, "wilting and death of agave"), have hit the crops.

Through the 1990s, diseases spread, particularly Fusarium fungi and Erwinia bacteria, exacerbated by the low genetic diversity of the agave plants. Other problems include the agave weevil, Scyphophorus acupunctatus, and a fungus, Thielaviopsis paradoxa.

According to a 2004 study, additional pathogens, Erwinia carotovora, Enterobacter agglomerans, Pseudomonas mendocina, and Serratia sp. are responsible for continued rot.




Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agave_tequilana




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