Evaluation of ethylene production by ten Mediterranean carnation cultivars and their response to ethylene exposure

A Ebrahimzadeh,M Jamilena-Quesada,S Jimenez-Becker,M T Lao-Arenas,S Manzano-Medina

doi:10.5424/sjar/20110902-124-10

Abstract

Vase life is one of the most important characters of postharvest cut flower quality. The onset of ethylene production and the amount of ethylene produced by flowers vary with the carnation cultivar, and thus influence their vase life. In the present study, differences in ethylene production and the response to exogenous ethylene among carnation cultivars were evaluated. Ten different cultivars: ‘Baltico’, ‘Domingo’, ‘Exotica’, ‘Famosa’, ‘Kiro’, ‘Madame Augier’, ‘Master’, ‘Mundo’, Pilar’ and ‘Reina’were studied. Five flowers for each cultivar were exposed for 8 hours to 1 μL L–1 exogenous ethylene concentration. Ethylene production, fresh weight and water uptake was measured daily throughout theexperiments. The 10 different cultivars studied showed clear differences in vase life, ethylene production, onset timein ethylene production and response to exogenous ethylene. The shortest vase life was for ‘Exotica’ flowers which wasonly 11.6 days, while ‘Baltico’ and ‘Pilar’ lasted 2.5-3 times longer than ‘Exotica’. Most of the investigated cultivarsshowed notable increases in the amount of ethylene. However, ‘Baltico’ and ‘Pilar’ flowers produced only a traceamount of ethylene and had the longest vase life. Results showed that cultivars with a long vase life (‘Baltico’ and‘Pilar’) display high ethylene responsiveness and, in contrast, cultivars with a short vase life (‘Exotica’ and ‘Mundo’) present low responsiveness. The decline in fresh weight of cut flowers observed in the last phase of their vase life occurred earlier in short-lived cultivars than in the longer-lived ones.

Highlights

Prolonged vase life is one of the most important factors in terms of the quality of cut flowers
Flower senescence in most carnation cultivars is characterized by autocatalytic ethylene production and subsequent wilting of the petals (Satoh et al, 2005), but some long lasting cultivar flowers are associated with reduction, delay or even the absence of ethylene (Wu et al, 1991), influencing their vase life (Nukui et al, 2004)
Results showed that cultivars with long vase life display a high Ethylene affected vase life (EAVL) (‘Baltico’ and ‘Pilar’)

Summary

Introduction

Prolonged vase life is one of the most important factors in terms of the quality of cut flowers. The senescence of carnation flowers was first studied using the cultivar ‘White Sim’ (Whitehead et al, 1984) In this cultivar, wilting of corolla is accompanied by a climacteric rise in ethylene synthesis (Fujino et al, 1980) and a relatively short vase life (6-7 days). Some later studies on other carnation cultivars such as ‘Sandra’ (Wu et al, 1989), ‘Killer’ (Serrano et al, 1991) and ‘Master’ (Serrano et al, 1999) showed different behaviour and lasted much longer than ‘White Sim’. They showed neither the normal increase in ethylene production, nor a marked respiration climacteric during their eventual senescence (Wu et al, 1989), suggesting that the production of ethylene, or response to it, might vary among carnation cultivars

Methods

Results

Conclusion