Cultivo agroflorestal de Psychotria Ipecacuanha (Brot.) Stokes no Território do Baixo Sul da Bahia

Abstract

The species Psychotria ipecacuanha (Brot.) Stokes, popularly known as ipeca or poaia, has attracted interest from the pharmaceutical industry for many decades due to the presence of cephalin and emetine alkaloids in their roots that have expectorant properties , emetic and amebicides. The extinction risk and difficulty of conventional crop production, front of the large market demand, encourage studies of cultivation methods that enable the economic exploitation and, consequently , the creation of new productive chains in rainforest areas . This study was performed at the Environmental Preservation Area Pratigi - APA Pratigi - located on the territory of Southern Bahia and aimed to quantify the growth and production of emetine in ipeca plants under agroforestry crop type cabruca , evaluating the effect of different lighting conditions , age and nutrient sources. Quantification of emetine was made by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and the experimental results were subjected to analysis of variance , comparing treatment means by the Tukey test and Skot Knot . The experimental results showed that the lighting conditions affect plant growth of ipeca , being higher in environments with shading above 90 % . Ipecc had an average yield of 207 kg ha - 1 of fresh root and 80 kg ha - 1 dry at 16 months of growing root ; and 240 kg ha - 1 of fresh root and 93 kg ha - 1 at 28 months. It was possible to obtain levels of emetine , the conditions of agroforestry cultivation cabruca kind in Southern Bahia territory , equivalent to the levels obtained from plants collected extractive in other regions of the country . Age affects the content of emetine in agroforestry cultivation conditions, with higher concentrations in younger plants, after 16 months of cultivation. Considering the sources of fertilizer, with and without liming, gave higher plant height and higher No leaves / plant in treatments without liming , however, yielded better results for No / plant roots in limed areas . For the accumulation of root dry weight, the commercial part of the plant , treatments with nitrogen, with and without liming , promoted the highest averages. The levels of emetine were higher in treatments without lime and subjected to potassium fertilization.