The fruits of the Amazon have attracted great interest in recent years, both nationally and internationally, according to its exotic flavors and pleasant and varied ways to use its pulp by agribusiness [1], pharmaceutical industry [2], high vitamin and antioxidant content[3].
In recent decades, the production of native fruits of the Amazon showed significant growth, mainly due to expansion of area for fruit production. It is noteworthy that this activity has had little impact on native vegetation, since most of the orchards were planted in areas previously occupied by other crops for market problems or environmental issues and pressure for sustainable agriculture, ceased to be interesting for farmers [4].
The Amazon forest has large number of non-domesticated fruit species and a minority being exploited through crop in place of natural occurrence [5]. According to the
Brazilian Yearbook of Fruit [6], explored the country are 500 varieties of edible fruit-producing species native and exotic, and of these, 220 are still as untamed. The high rate of destruction of biomes, together with the predatory extraction, result in loss of genetic material of desirable characteristics, [7], with potential for use in food, as an ornamental or in pharmaceutical production can never be known. It is therefore essential to know these species and their growing needs for exploitation on a commercial scale, a rational and sustainable.
However, little efficient production technology and knowledge of native Amazonian fruit tree species exist. Low orchard productivity indicates that Amazonian fruit is underused; underuse, in turn, has hindered its cultivation. In[8] notes that many of the current fruit production systems were developed empirically, which required technology that ensured greater productivity, sustainability, and profitability than the older production systems. Such technology involves crop management, production of reproducible seedlings, and distribution of the seedlings to farmers. Therefore, the first step in domesticating native fruit species and in introducing them to commercial cultivationis developing seedling propagation techniques.
The sexual propagation of native plants for use in horticulture, is not advantageous because it results in populations with wide variation in the period of maturation. In addition, some species have seeds with dormancy, which compromises the germination and seedling production on a commercial scale, or the recalcitrance of the seeds, preventing their storage for extended periods.
The method of propagation of fruit species most commonly used grafting. This technique, like other methods of vegetative propagation allow the cloning of selected plants directly from nature or from artificial hybridizations, maintaining their desirable traits. Vegetative propagation results in high quality seedlings in orchards and more uniform and earlier, with higher productivity and better quality of fruits [9]. Besides these advantages, the graft is also advantageous because it allows greater control of plant height facilitating the management and harvesting, and the formation of plants with resistance to pathogens in soils and drought tolerant.
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