angustifolia complex, and it is likely that this area was where traditional farmers initiated the selection of Agave germplasm for spirit production.
Ethnobotanical evidence shows that Southern Jalisco is the nucleus of the greatest diversity of spirit producing landraces within the A. angustifolia in the state of Jalisco as possible wild closest relatives of the blue agave. Previous studies using traditional molecular markers have proposed wild populations of A. rhodacantha belong to a morphological and genetic complex of species known as A. angustifolia is the most extensively distributed and cultivated for this purpose. Mexico is the center of the diversity and domestication of Agave, where 53 species are used for spirit production, most widely known as “mezcal”. Īrea of study (Jalisco, Mexico) and localities where samples were collected. These current conditions urge the development and promotion of traditional and new landraces locally adapted to regional climatic regimes and conditions. In addition, to preserve the integrity of the blue agave, producers have historically recurred almost exclusively to asexual propagation, a strategy that has also been adopted for the cultivation of other landraces, resulting in an extreme loss of genetic diversity. Since the DOT established that only blue agave can be used to make tequila, producers shifted their efforts to grow only blue agave landrace, severely mining the diversity of landraces that used to be part of traditional tequila agroecosystems 400 years ago. Unfortunately, this industrialization also brought expensive social and environmental consequences, including the erosion of the diversity of traditional landraces. The blue agave is now massively cultivated and used in a highly industrialized system owned by transnational corporations. After the Denomination of Origin of Tequila (DOT) obtained in 1977, the number of plants cultivated for tequila production has increased enormously.
“Azul”, tequila has been produced traditionally since the 18th century in the state of Jalisco ( Figure 1). Made from the “blue agave” plant Agave tequilana var. This, together with the long life-cycle particular of agaves, explains the incipient domestication status of cultivars and landraces.įrom all spirits produced in Mexico using Agave, tequila is the most emblematic. This indicates the extremely recent initiation of the management and domestication processes of Agave with spirit production purposes, especially for some landraces such as the tequila plant. Although it has been suggested that Agave plants have been used as a source of food or fiber production for at least 9000 years, the distillation of spirits using Agave did not begin until the 16th century and the cultivation and production of spirits increased with the popularity of tequila as recently as the early 19th century. The use of Agave for spirits production is recent in human history. angustifolia traditional and autochthonous landraces. Our large genome level dataset allows a better understanding of the genetic identity of important A. We found no evidence to genetically delimitate A. In contrast with previous studies, our pool of ca 20K high quality unlinked SNPs provided more information and helped us to distinguish different genetic groups that are congruent with the ethnobotanical landraces. rhodacantha to evaluate their relationship with A. We included additional samples identified as A. angustifolia plants classified as different landraces, measured several morphological traits, and characterized their genetic differentiation and diversity at the genome-wide level. After interviews with producers from different localities in Jalisco, Mexico, we sampled A.
angustifolia is cultivated under different types and levels of management, and although traditional producers identify several landraces, for the non-trained eye there are no perceivable differences. angustifolia is a wild species extensively distributed from North to Central America, and previous studies show that it is highly related to the tequila agave A. angustifolia is the most popular given its agricultural extension. Traditional agave spirits such as mezcal or tequila are produced all over Mexico using different species of Agave.
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