A research team from INTA San Pedro –Buenos Aires– registered its third onion cultivar in the National Register of Cultivars of the National Seed Institute. This new variety is Alcira INTA, a variety that stands out for its high yield and for being less spicy than other varieties. Seeds are now available for producers to assess their production quality.
“Alcira INTA has high yields and its flavor is not as spicy as the flavor of other Argentine onions. It produces elongated yellow-brown colored bulbs and it has good adaptation to the Pampean region. It has an intermediate cycle that lasts 210 days from planting to harvest, which is carried out at the end of November,” stated Ignacio Paunero, a specialist in genetic improvement at the INTA San Pedro Experimental Station. “This is the third onion variety developed by this research team, after the Paula and Victoria INTA variety, to increase the onion materials available for the productive sector.”
“Since the 2015 campaign, we've found individual yellow-brown onions that have the same bulb shape as the Paula INTA variety purple onion within the population of this crop. They are probably the product of a spontaneous mutation,” Paunero stated. “During the 2017 campaign, we decided to select bulbs of this coloration and multiply them in isolation, obtaining some seeds.”
Then, in the 2019 and 2021 campaigns, we obtained one hundred percent yellow-brown bulbs, which demonstrated their stability. Subsequently, in the 2022 campaign, we were able to obtain a small number of seeds so they could be evaluated by institutions, research organizations, and private seedbeds.
At this stage, in order to have more seeds, we are signing agreements with nurseries interested in multiplying this new variety, the INTA stated.
