Asexual propagation of peach palm by division of the clump and extraction of the off-shoots

Abstract

The peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) is a native Amazonian palm tree that produces fruits and palm hearts, and is now attracting the interest of the farmers in other parts of Brazil given the economical potential of palm heart production. Traditionally the peach palm is propagated by seeds, which yield segregating progenies due to cross-pollination. To guarantee the uniformity and quality of elite selections, the alternative is the propagation of superior genotypes from off-shoots (tillers), because an efficient in vitro cultivation protocol does not exist. The objective of the present study was the development of a more appropriate technique of vegetative propagation by division of the clump, in order to multiply plants selected in the improvement program. A peach palm clump contains between 2 and 20 off-shoots after cutting for palm heart; these can be separated one from the other with iron wedges, and extracted immediately or left for recovery for subsequent extraction. The experimental design was randomized blocks with three replications, using a 3x5 factorial, where the factors were: height of the off-shoots (<30, 30-60, >60 cm) and recovery time after the separation of the off-shoots from the clump (0, 30, 60, 90 and 120 days). The off-shoots between 30 and 60 cm and left around a month of recovery in the field after separation from the clump presented 65% of survival, while those left around four months presented 80% of survival.

Understanding the Technical-Scientific Gaps of Underutilized Tropical Species: The Case of Bactris gasipaes Kunth

“…The presence of a primary root system could help with adaptation when removed from the clump. This method is divided into two phases, i.e., the field phase, consisting of the selection of the shoots and separation of the clump, and maintenance in the greenhouse for 30 days, and then transfer to nursery bags with the use of shade cloths in 50% of the sunlight [ 49 ]. However, this propagation method still has a lower success ratio when compared to the use of seeds.…”

Estado actual del banco de germoplasma de pejibaye (Bactris gasipaes), Guápiles, Costa Rica.

“…En el 2013 se realizó un censo de campo para obtener una estimativa de mortalidad, en los cuales se cuantificó la presencia o ausencia de cada individuo. De manera complementaria, para las secciones L, S, X, Y (Mora-Urpí, 1978) se cuantificaron las palmeras con hijuelos que permitirían la recuperación del banco mediante reproducción vegetativa (Rengifo, 1993;Flores et al, 2012); esto con el fin de determinar el potencial de las accesiones para propagación. Se determinó el número de accesiones actuales y la tasa de mortalidad.…”

Somatic embryogenesis and plant regeneration from transverse thin cell layers of adult peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) lateral offshoots

“…Therefore, vegetative propagation has been considered for establishing commercial plantations with selected genotypes. However, the use of offshoots (tillers) has given only partially positive results and at relatively low rates ( Flores et al, 2012 ), while micropropagation has been considered a possibility worth further exploration ( Stefenon et al, 2020 ).…”