What is the Blue Agave?
Blue Agave, the tequila agave of the Agave tequilana species is an agave that is an important economic product of Jalisco state in Mexico due to its role as the base ingredient of tequila.
The tequila agave grows natively in Jalisco, favoring the high altitudes 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 meters tall and topped with yellow flowers. The flowers are pollinated by a native bat 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.
Over 200 million Blue Agave plants are grown in several regions of Mexico, but in recent years the ability of farmers to meet demand has been in question. Through poor breeding practices, Blue Agave has lost resistance to fusarium fungus and several other diseases which currently render 25%-30% of the plants unusable for consumption.
Filed under: Tequila History