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.