Postharvest Longevity of Antirrhinum majus L. Cut Flowers as Influenced by Backcrosses to a Short-lived Recurrent Parent and Harvest Time

Abstract

An inbred backcrossing approach was taken to transfer long postharvest keeping time of cut flowers from a white inbred line of Antirrhinum majus L. into a yellow short-lived inbred line. Three backcrosses to the short-lived recurrent parent were done followed by three generations of selfing by single-seed descent. Plants from 56 accessions of BC1S3 through BC3S3 were grown twice (June and August 1995) in a greenhouse and flower stems harvested for postharvest longevity evaluation. Postharvest evaluation was done in deionized water under continuous fluorescent light. Longevity was determined as the number of days from cutting to discard when 50% of the open florets on a flower stem wilted or turned brown. One yellow accession was retrieved that was not significantly different in postharvest longevity from the white long-lived parent. Environment substantially influenced postharvest longevity over harvest dates. Possible causes for variation of postharvest keeping time will be presented.