This work was carried out in the experimental area of the Universidade Federal de Lavras, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, with the objective of comparing the growth, development and production in garlic plants, of the cultivar Gigante Roxão grown from tissue culture (meristem-tip culture), with plants of the same cultivar multiplied in a conventional way. The experiment was laid out in a complete split splot randomised block scheme with two treatments (plants obtained from tissue culture and conventional multiplication) in the plots, and seven evaluation dates (30, 50, 70, 90, 110, 130 and 150 days after planting) as sub-plots. Four replications were used. At each date, six plants/plot were collected for dry matter determination (leaves, bulbs, roots and total) and also to evaluate the plant growth characteristics, plant height, number of leaves per plant and bulb growth. At the end of the experiment production, weight and number of cloves per bulb were evaluated. The development of aerial plant parts was similar among the treatments until 70 days after planting, after which time, plants propagated by tissue culture displayed superior growth. The tissue culture plants showed increases in plant height, dry matter of aerial parts and roots in relation to conventional plants, by 29.0%, 80.3% and 145.0% respectively 110 days after planting. Tissue culture plants also showed a respective 68.2% and 67.0% greater bulb and total dry matter 150 days after planting when compared to conventionally multiplied plants. The pseudostalk diameter/bulb ratio indicated that formation of bulbs by tissue culture plants was delayed by 13 days in relation to bulbs from plants multiplied by the conventional way, thus increasing the lifecycle by the same amount of days. For mean bulb weight and number of cloves per bulb, plants from tissue culture once more stood out, showing increases of 109.5% and 37.0%, respectively, which resulted in an increase of bulbs of 99.8% in bulb production.
Allium sativum; in vitro culture; growth curve; productivity
