Post harvest behaviour of cut daffodil as influenced by certain pulsing treatments

An investigation was carried out on cut daffodil cv. Pheasant's Eye to determine the most effective pulsing treatments for improving vase life and quality. Experiment consisted of 11 pulsing treatments containing, sucrose (S) 6% alone and its various combinations with aluminium sulphate (AS: 25, 50, 75 mg l⁻¹), sodium benzoate (SB: 30, 60, 90 mg l⁻¹ and ascorbic acid (AA: 20, 40 and 60 mg l⁻¹) along with control as distilled water. Uniform scapes of daffodil were cut at goose-neck stage and pulsed in different solutions for 2, 4 and 6 hours duration. Treated scapes were kept in plain water to study their post harvest behaviour. Results revealed that sucrose 6% + AS 50 mg l⁻¹ (P₃) helped scapes to maintain better water relations in terms of water uptake, water loss, water balance and fresh weight change which consequenced the maximum vase life of 10.66 days as compared with 7.51 days in control (P₁₁). Increasing pulsing duration further promoted these attributes to provide the basis for a prolonged vase life. Interaction of pulsing treatments with pulsing duration exhibited clear differences among the treatments with maximum vase life of 11.25 days in P₃ x T₃.