**Agronomic and Biotechnological Strategies for Breeding Cultivated Garlic in Mexico**

Héctor Silos Espino et al.*\**

*Biotechnology Applied Laboratory, Instituto Tecnológico El Llano, Aguascalientes (ITEL), km. 18 Carr. Aguascalientes-San Luís Potosí México* 

#### **1. Introduction**

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Garlic is an apomyctic diploid species (2n=2x=16) with vegetative reproduction that belongs to the *Allium* genus (Alliaceae), which includes onion (*Allium cepa*), leek (*A. ampeloprasum*) and shallot (*A. ascalonicum*) (Mc-Collum, 1987; Figliuolo et al., 2001; Ipek et al., 2003; 2005). The importance of garlic was recognized by humans at bronze era about 5000 years ago, and since these early times, has been used as food, condiment and medicine by Asians and Mediterranean (Ipek et al., 2005). World production of garlic is ranked 14th among vegetables with a total of 14.5 million ton (Trejo, 2006). In Mexico, its consumption is about 400 g *per capita* (Chávez, 2008), and the national production is considered low as compared to other countries such as China (80 % world production), India, Korea and the rest of the world (20 %) (FAOSTAT, 2011). Still, Mexico has a place as exporter of garlic produced mainly from the states: Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes, Baja California, Puebla and Sonora (Trejo, 2006). The areas in Mexico during winter 2008, dedicated to garlic were 5,085 ha with a total yield of 49,968 ton (SIAP, 2011).

Among other problems, Mexican garlic has a limited spectrum of high yielding cultivars for different environments and, at the same time, have good market qualities. Keeping in mind that kind of problems, this chapter was mainly focused on agriculture and biotechnology research done at four institutions. The first two sections include morphological, physiological and cytogenetic characterizations of the most common cultivars and related germplasm; the third section describes some advances on garlic micropropagation. The last

<sup>\*</sup> Flora San Juan Hernández1, Olivio Hernández Hernández1, Darío Silva Bautista1, Alan Roy Macías Ávila1, Francisco Nieto Muñoz1, Luis L. Valera Montero1, Silvia Flores Benítez1, Luis Martín Macías Valdez2, Tarsicio Corona Torres3, Mario Leonel Quezada Parga4 and Juan Florencio Gómez Leyva5 *1Biotechnology Applied Laboratory, Instituto Tecnológico El Llano, Aguascalientes (ITEL), km. 18 Carr. Aguascalientes-San Luís Potosí, México* 

*<sup>2</sup>Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuarias. Campo Experimental. Pabellón de Arteaga, km 32.5 carr. Aguascalientes-Zacatecas, México* 

*<sup>3</sup>Cytogenetic Laboratory "Maestra Czeslawa Prywer Linzbarka", Colegio de Postgraduados, km. 36.5, carr. México-Texcoco Montecillo, Texcoco, Estado de México, México* 

*<sup>4</sup>Fundación Produce Aguascalientes A. C. Av. Universidad 604 Interior 6 y 7, Fracc. Unidad Ganadera, Aguascalientes Ags., México* 

*<sup>5</sup>Molecular Biology Laboratory, Instituto Tecnológico de Tlajomulco, Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Jalisco, Mexico*

section describes our strategy for obtaining garlic genotypes with higher yield capability and better bulb quality characteristics according to the market demand.
