Image: Agave tequilana (5434978642)

Description: Agave tequilana, commonly called blue agave, tequila agave, mezcal or maguey is an agave plant that is an important economic product of Jalisco, Mexico, due to its role as the base ingredient of tequila, a popular distilled spirit. The high production of sugars - mostly in the form of fructose - in the core of this plant is the most important characteristic of the plant making it suitable for the preparation of alcoholic beverages.

The tequila agave is a native of Jalisco, Mexico. The tequila agave favors high altitudes of more than 1,500 meters and grows in rich and sandy soils. While commercial and wild agaves have different life cycles, both grow into large succulents, with spiky fleshy leaves, that can reach over two meters in height. Wild Agaves, however, sprout a shoot when about five years old, that can grow an additional five meters and are topped with yellow flowers.

The flowers are pollinated by a native bat (Leptonycteris nivalis) 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. It is rare for one kept as a houseplant to flower; nevertheless, a fifty year old blue agave in Boston grew a 10 m (30 ft) stalk requiring a hole in the greenhouse roof and flowered in the summer of 2006.

Tequila is produced by removing the heart of the plant in its twelfth year. Normally weighing between 35–90 kg (77–198 lb).[citation needed] This heart is stripped of its leaves and heated to remove the sap, which is fermented and distilled. Other beverages like mezcal and pulque are also produced from blue and other agaves by different methods (though still using the sap) and are regarded as more traditional.

Researchers from Mexico's University of Guadalajara believe blue agave contains compounds that may be useful in carrying drugs to the intestines to treat diseases, such as Crohn's disease and colitis.
Author: Leonora Enking from West Sussex, England
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