Quality of floral stems of different gladiolus cultivars grown in a subtropical environment

Abstract

Currently, floriculture has drawn the attention of farmers as an option for income on their properties. The gladiolus is a culture destined to produce cut flowers, widely used by florists and decorators. Despite its wide use, there is still not much information about the behavior of different cultivars in some places of cultivation in the country and the possibility of producing quality stems. In this sense, the objective of this work was to evaluate the quality of stems from different cultivars of gladiolus in a subtropical environment. The work was performed in the city of Chopinzinho/PR. The experiment was conducted in a randomized block design with five repetitions. The factor studied is represented by cultivars of different cycles of the gladiolus culture, as follows: Red Beauty (intermediate II), White Friendship (early), and Jester (intermediate II). Planting was performed using bulbs, inserted in the soil at an average depth of 10 cm with a spacing of 30 cm between plants and 40 cm between rows. The quality of stems was evaluated by measuring the length of stems, length of the stem, the diameter of the stem, and the number of florets per spike. Also, based on one of the quantitative standards of quality of floral stems established for gladiolus, the plants were classified according to the length and diameter of the stems in the classes: 75, 90, and 110. The data were submitted to variance analysis, and after significant results were found, the data were submitted to mean comparison using the LSD test at a 5% error probability. For the data in relation to commercial classification, descriptive statistics were used. The results show that factors related to climate directly interfere in the development and flowering of gladiolus plants, and the cultivars White Friendship, Red Beauty and Jester express different responses to these factors. In general, the White Friendship and Jester cultivars obtained the best results for stem quality, considering the variables stem length and total length of the stem, length of the stem and diameter of the stem. Even though the cultivar Red Beauty showed lower quality indices, they are still within the commercialization standard for gladiolus. Thus, it is possible to produce gladiolus stems with quality in this environment.