Double Flower Freesia ‘Sweet Lemon’ with Strong Fragrance

Abstract

Freesia (Freesia hybrida Hort.) ‘Sweet Lemon’ was developed for the cut flowers in National Institute of Horticultural Herbal Science, Rural Development Administration, Korea in 2015. This hybrid was crossed and selected from ‘Teresa’ and ‘Yvonne’ in 2007. Morphological characteristics of the selected freesia hybrid were investigated for 5 years from 2009 to 2014, and then it was named ‘Sweet Lemon’ in 2015. ‘Sweet Lemon’ has double and lemon petals (RHS color chart Y2B). The average flower diameter was 6.8 cm and the average yield is 6.7. The growth of the plant is vigorous and the average plant height is 99.0cm, which is 34.7cm higher than the standard cultivar ‘Yvonne’. The average floret number per stalk of ‘Sweet Lemon’ was 10.7, and stalk length was 7.7 cm. The average days to first flowering of ‘Sweet Lemon’, 126 days, was approximately 20 days earlier than the control cultivar. It’s average vase life and yield is 8.7 days and 5.6 cormlets per plant, respectively. Totally 58 of volatile compounds were identified using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), the major components were linalool, alpha-terpineol, alpha-selinene, and limonene.