Produção agroecológica de flores do feijão-borboleta (Clitoria ternatea L.), inovação gastronômica e conversão de gramado residencial em horta como enfrentamento ao isolamento social da Covid-19

Abstract

The use of Non-Conventional Food Plants (PANC) opens up new markets and challenges in the design of innovative production systems and equitable marketing. The butterfly bean (FB) (Clitoria ternatea L.) is a perennial legume, native to Equatorial Asia, with intense flowering, well distributed throughout the year. The flowers are used as a remedy in folk medicine and their rare cerulean pigment is valued in gastronomic art. The plant is ruderal, has potential for edible landscaping, but in Brazil its main ethnobotanical use is only agrosilvopastoral and is not even included in the compendium on Seed Analysis (RAS, 2009). This dissertation was built from experiments and independent publications, which range from production to post-harvest of FB, which is why it is presented in the form of chapters. Chapter I contemplates the characterization and evaluation of in vitro seeds, providing metrics and parameters of FB seeds obtained from agroecological cultivation in Macaé/RJ/Brazil, as follows: a) average length=6.2mm; b) average width=4.3mm; c) average thickness=3.8mm; d) average of seeds/legume=8; e) weight of 1000 seeds=130g; f) number of seeds/kg=8000; g) germination rate: in autoclaved sand=82%, in gerbox=77%, in roll paper=63%; h) phytosanitary aspects: exams and photomicrographs allowed the association of the genera Colletotrichum, Cladosporium and Penicillium as pathogens of FB seeds. Chapter II is focused on the in vivo phytotechnics of the species, sowing, transplanting and cultivation in pots for flower production. Sowing trial indicated better results with Carolina soil® regarding germination rate (49%) and germination speed index (27.7). Attempts of irrigated and stranded cultivation of FB in 8 L pots showed superior flowering productivity in a substrate consisting of 6 L FORTH flower boxes®: 2 L tanned bovine manure. It was also possible to obtain average growth parameters of plants, flowering branches, floral buds, open flowers, growing vegetables and plant dry weight, as well as describe the phenological cycle of FB and the physiological events that characterize its stages (V0 to R7) throughout development, from sowing to ripening of the vegetables. Chapter III includes a Technical Communiqué for the simplified domestic dehydration of FB flowers, published as a chapter in a digital book for free access. Chapter IV, on the other hand, is an illustrated guide for gastronomic innovation in the form of a digital book for free publication, consisting of suggestions for culinary preparations based on FB flowers, the simplest means to obtain its natural coloring and ethnobotanical data for the species. Finally, considering that the social isolation and financial constraint resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic accentuated the need to expand domestic agroecology as a collective instrument for the population's food and nutrition security, Chapter V is presented in the form of an article published in Revista Educação Ambiental em Ação, on the conversion of a residential lawn into an urban agro-ecological site, listing the main effects sympathetic to the subsistence itself, and to the ecology of the periurban landscape where the experimental field and kitchen tests that integrate this dissertation were developed.