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/ Wednesday, February 2, 2022
Plantation of blue agave in Jalisco, Mexico.
Mexican university solves agave shortage to continue tequila production
To avoid falling into these semimonthly online by MDPI. unfair practices and guarantee The article is indexed in the the liquor’s high-quality Journal Citation Reports with an standards, several tequila impact factor of 4.35. companies have begun to use The study younger agave plants (between Additional Data confirms that the four and six years old) in their The results have been The Weekly Journal Staff determination of processes. of great interest to the the isotopic ratio “However, it was suspected international scientific n investigation by the of carbon 13 and this practice could alter the community, as well as to Tequila Autonomous University of oxygen 18 can be general characteristics of producers and consumers, since Guadalajara (UAG, for its presented as an the product, which in turn it demonstrates that the use Spanish acronym) concluded auxiliary parameter could affect the quality and of agave plants with different for the authenticity young agave plants can be authenticity parameters of ages (four, five and six years) in of the liquor. used in the production of the drink. This is where the the production of tequila 100% tequila without altering the scientific research developed at white class agave does not have parameters of quality and authenticity of the UAG began,” Romero Cano said. a negative impact on quality Professors Dr. Armando drink, thus strengthening the industry. parameters. Campos Rodríguez, Dr. Marco In recent years there has been a scarcity of These results are supported because, after the A. Zárate Navarro and Dr. Ana Itzel Zárate Guzmán, agave in the region. Dr. Luis A. Romero Cano, second distillation, the product complies with the researchers at UAG’s Department of Biotechnology Research Professor at UAG and one of the NOM-006-SCFI-2012 official standard parameters. researchers in this project, explained the growing and Environment, developed a project, along with Both the scientific article and Efraín Acosta’s demand for Tequila and its commercial expansion a tequila company in the region, which would Master’s thesis discuss in detail the evidence scientifically support the practice of using younger into international markets caused a particular obtained in the study. agave plants. shortage of the blue variety of the “Agave The results also confirm previously published The group of researchers recently published the Tequilana Weber” plant, the raw material used in studies where the determination of the isotopic article “Effect of Age of Agave Tequilana Weber Blue the production of tequila. ratio of carbon 13 and oxygen 18 is presented as “According to historical data, it has been shown Variety on Quality and Authenticity Parameters for an auxiliary parameter for the authenticity of the the Tequila 100% Agave Silver Class: Evaluation at this phenomenon of scarcity occurs every seven liquor. the Industrial-Scale Level”, in FOODS magazine, or eight years due to the time it takes for the “This information can be useful as an auxiliary an international, scientific, peer-reviewed, open agave plant to mature for harvesting. Agave is parameter to ensure, based on the content of a access journal of food science that is published harvested just before the flowering of the plant, bottle, whether the drink has been made from an Agave Tequilana Weber blue variety plant and when the plant reaches its maximum sugar corroborate the geographical location where the content,” Romero Cano explained. product was made,” Romero Cano explained. The university professor recalled that data The study also shows that an effective strategy shared by the Tequila Regulatory Council to face the scarcity and oversupply of raw material (CRT), from 1995 to 2012, confirms there was a to produce 100% agave silver class tequila is the transition from oversupply of agave to scarcity, use of young agave (four years). and back to oversupply, which impacted the The authors thanked the Dean of Design, price of the raw material. Because of that, cases Science and Technology, as well as UAG’s Research of product adulteration and counterfeiting Directorate, for the support received to achieve the were detected among disloyal producers, who – Romero Cano, publication of the article through an open service began to use agave plants of different species or Research professor, UAG so that there is free access to the content of the harvested outside the territory that corresponds article. to Tequila’s Denomination of Origin.
Younger agave plants can now be used, keeping the quality parameters of the liquor
In fact,
A
Agave is harvested just before the flowering of the plant, when the plant reaches its maximum sugar content.
