Abstract
The present study was carried out to elucidate the effect of different sowing dates and temperature on growth, yield and quality of two important cultivars of Gladiolus grandiflorus L. Rose supreme and White prosperity .The results showed that different planting dates have significant effect on number of days taken by gladiolus corm to germinate. A significant superiority of T1 5.5 days over T2 with 9.10 days on all the treatments was observed. Among the treatments maximum sprouting percentage was recorded in T2 with 94.66 % followed by T3 82.19 % on all the treatments. The days to 6-leaves stage depict highly significant difference in variance of treatments, interactive effect of treatments and cultivars. The maximum plant height (115.33cm) was recorded in T2 followed by T3 with 111.04cm. Mean values of number of leaves indicated significant superiority of T2 with 8.02 leaves and T3 with 7.93 leaves on all other treatments. The maximum chlorophyll contents 71.60 were recorded in T2 followed by T3 with 67.65 on all the treatments. Spike length showed highly significant difference in variance of treatments, interactive effect of treatments and cultivars. The maximum number of florets (17.16) was recorded in T2 followed by T3 with 15.83 florets. Among the treatments maximum corm diameter (6.19 cm) was recorded on T2 and T6 showed maximum number of cormels (5.96 cm). It is suggested that proper planting date reduce the production cost by reducing the crop time and also produce elite flowers with increased market value.
Highlights
Floriculture has emerged as a potential business in Pakistan
Maximum temperature was recorded during plantation on 10th Sep. and 25th Sep. with 26.35 ̊C and 25.08 ̊C respectively while lowest temperature 15.85 ̊C was recorded during 10th Nov. plantation
In this experiment a strong correlation was observed between the plant height and temperature (Fig 1D)
Summary
Floriculture has emerged as a potential business in Pakistan. The most important floricultural crops in the Pakistan cut flowers trade are Roses, Gladiolus, Tuberoses, Iris, Narcissus, Lilies, Freesia, Statice and Gerbera. Gladiolus is one of the few plants which produce pleasant cut flowers with long spikes It is cultivated in most of the tropical and subtropical countries of the world [3]. Gladiolus as most common flowering plant, prefer a growing location in full sun for most of the day. Both the presence and absence of light greatly affects flower development. The present research work was planned to investigate the growth and flowering of gladiolus in early and late growing season and to study its correlation with temperature under agro-ecological conditions of Faisalabad Pakistan and to establish a protocol for off-seasoning which is commercially feasible and adoptable with minimum capital investment. Fresh weight of spike (g), dry weight of spike (g), corms parameters, diameter of corms (mm), weight of corms (g), number of cormels and weight of cormels (g) were computed
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