Maguey (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Agave salmiana</Emphasis>) infructescence morphology and its relationship to yield components

Agaves are long-lived semelparous plants that produce a high number of seeds, in dehiscent capsules, on the apical section of a stalk, up to 5 m long, after 8–25 years. These and other characteristics such as yield and yield components are scarcely evaluated in the plants of the Agave genus. The objective of this study was to quantify the capsules and seeds yield of A. salmiana Otto ex Salm-Dyck plants simultaneously maturing and growing in the same region. Infructescences of three plants simultaneously growing at San Luis Potosí, Mexico, were harvested. On them we evaluated the number of umbels, capsules and seeds (normal and sterile) and their mass per plant. The study was developed on a completely randomized design with each infructescence as an experimental unit. Also, the type distribution of the number and mass of these yield components along the stalk was evaluated with the Chi square test for goodness of fit, the Shapiro–Wilks for normality tests, asymmetry and kurtosis. Data were analyzed with the ANOVA and multiple comparisons by the Tukey test (p?≤?0.05). The number of umbels per plant (17–25), capsule per umbel (2–179) and per plant (554–1990), normal seed per capsule (0–297), normal seeds per plant (30,610–186,209) and sterile seeds per plant (211,059–619,251) widely and significantly varied among infructescences. Biomass of capsules per plant umbel (3–795 g), biomass of sterile and normal seeds per capsule (0.071–1.449 and 0–3.320 g), per umbel (0.34–97.76 and 0.21–185.26 g) and per plant (182–1052 and 334–2069 g) also varied widely. Seed yield was statistically different between plants simultaneously growing and maturing at the same site.