Agroecological production of butterfly bean flowers and gastronomic innovation
fabaceae, butterfly pea flower, edible flowers, gongocompostagem
Butterfly bean (Clitoria ternatea L.) is a perennial legume, native to Equatorial Asia, of intense flowering, well distributed throughout the year. Flowers are used as a medicine in folk medicine and their rare blue-purple pigment is well valued in gastronomic art. The plant is ruderal, has potential for edible landscaping, improves the soil, but is still poorly cultivated in Brazil, where its most common use is animal nutrition. This Dissertation results in a Technical Communication for the agroecological cultivation of butterfly beans (Chapter I); in a recipe illustrated by the culinary use of flowers (Chapter II) and article on the conversion of a grassy yard into an urban agroecological system (Chapter III). Butterfly bean seeds were obtained in 2014 at Fazendinha Agroecológica. Excicata of the cultivated genetic material is deposited in the Herbarium of this University (tombo___). The experiment was carried out in a condominium plot of 380 m2, located in the periurban area of Macaé / RJ. The trial consisted of designing, implanting and personally managing, for one year, an agroecological system for cultivating butterfly beans and the processing of flowers. The most vigorous seedlings were obtained by germinating the seeds in trays filled with pure gong compost, irrigating on alternate days and weekly spraying of biofertilizer (1:10 water). In April / 2020, at 65 days of sowing, with 15 cm in height, the specimens were planted in line, with a distance of 2.5 m between plants. The site received an average of 8 hours of sunshine per day. Latosol soil from a landfill, previously compacted and inhabited by emerald grass (Zoysia sp.). The planting cradles measured 30 cm in three dimensions, in each of them a gong-compound was added at the rate of 5 liters per plant. The bed was covered with cardboard and protected by a blanket of straw assorted 50 cm wide by 20 cm high, with bimonthly replacement of the straw. The plants were initially tutored by a wooden slat and subsequently conducted in hexagonal wire mesh (span diameter 7cm). Irrigation was daily in the first fortnight and then weekly, only when the drought reached 10 days. Fertilization was performed biweekly, via leaf, by liquid biofertilizer (1:10 water). The average productivity achieved in this system was ____ flowers / day / plant. The landscape effect of the screen was achieved after ____ months of planting. After 12 months of sowing, the plants reached ____ cm in basal stem diameter. In the period of one year, each plant occupied an area of ____ m2. Without conducting pruning or thinning, in the period of the experiment the set of ten plants reached a volume of biomass (above ground) estimated at ___ m3. All the gongocomposite and the biofertilizer used in the experiment were made in the domestic environment, with low cost substrates, such as: grass clippings, urban tree leaves, kitchen scraps, equine stable bed, bovine and poultry manure, stove and barbecue, sawmill shavings, and the imprecifiable metabolism of microorganisms.