Today we visited the greenhouse at the Irapuato campus. They harvest rainwater and use it to water the plants inside of the greenhouse. There are about 4000 plants inside of the greenhouse, the in vitro plants from the tissue lab are placed here.
We also visited an asparagus farm, asparagus is an introduced plant to Mexico. The farmer has 150 acres to grow asparagus. For every hectare, four to six toms of asparagus are produced. Asparagus is a hearty plant, it doesn’t need as much water as other crops which is why the farmer could grow his rips last year while other farmers could not. Also asparagus is easier to harvest and requires less machinery, so the farmer reduces his costs. The only disadvantage of asparagus is that it needs two and a half years to reach maturity, but then it continues to produce product over the course of eight years. The best time to harvest asparagus is from May to August because this is their window of opportunity, during these months Peru and California are not producing any asparagus.