Maqui (Aristotelia chilensis): Morpho-phenological characterization to design high-yielding cultivation techniques

•Transition from vegetative to floral meristem occurs during fruit development.•Fruit-bearing branches continue their growth producing fruit in the next season.•A large natural variability will permit selection of high producing clones.•About one third of the fruit weight corresponds to seeds and two thirds to pulp.

Maqui (Aristotelia chilensis) is a species whose berries contain one of the highest levels of antioxidant currently known. At present the rising demand for fruit is being supplied exclusively by wild crafted raw material. Ongoing domestication includes studies of fruit production, in both wild populations and cultivated progenies from different provenances, as a basis for proposals of high-yielding cultivation techniques. Morphological characterization at the end of the first summer indicated significant differences between provenances for plant height (mean values from 99 to 133 cm), petiole length (1.8–2.5 cm), width of the leaf blade (3.6–5.1 cm), ratio leaf length/width (1.9–2.2) and leaf area (16–30 cm2). Plant width (69–91 cm), internode length (2.7–3.3 cm) and leaf blade length (7.8–9.9 cm) did not differ among clones of different provenances. Fruit set in wild populations ranged from 54% in a mountainous area to 61% in a coastal population. Some hermaphrodite plants even reached 69%. Covered floral branches set very few fruits, less than half the weight of uncovered branches (38 and 97 mg, respectively), while the pulp–seed relation was similar for both treatments, about 2:1. Histological studies revealed that transition from vegetative to floral meristem occurs in spring during fruit development on the branches that are formed as an elongation to the flowering and fruit bearing shoot. The establishment of phenological stages permits the visualization of the variation in sprouting, blooming, fruit ripening between different clones. The present results reveal a large variability for vegetative and fruit producing characteristic that would permit a successful selection of high yielding plants. At the same time, fundamental knowledge about plant architecture and phenology supports studies of cultivation techniques, such as optimizing density, harvest or pruning.

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