Journal of Ornamental Horticulture

A short juvenile period and early flowering are the most important traits in lily breeding and an inbred line ‘No. 18′ developed at ICAR-IARI Regional Station, Katrain has valuable traits such as ‘precocious flowering’ ability, i.e., it reaches anthesis in less than one year from seed germination, with multiple shooting of flower stalks. To verify the possibility of the usefulness of these traits in lily breeding, four combinations of interspecific crosses (No.18 as the seed parent; Prato, Navona, Brunello and Pollyanna, as pollen parents and No.18 as a check) were developed through cut-style pollination. Germination was observed in all four interspecific crosses. These crosses were evaluated for various growth and development traits. Plant height was observed maximum in a cross between No.18 × Navona (38.0 cm). Average number of days to flowering from seed sowing was recorded minimum in a cross between No.18 × Prato (295.0 days). 100% of the plants amongst No.18 flowered in the first year followed by 33.3% flowering during 1^st year in No. 18 × Brunello. The cross No.18 × Navona showed a maximum differentiation of 1.9 flower stalks within a year when grown outdoors. Further, significant positive correlations of days to flowering with leaf length (0.996), bud length with days to shoot emergence (0.972), number of shoots per plant with stem diameter (0.926) and bulb size (0.931) was observed. These results suggest the possibility of breeding new type of cultivars in lilium with desired traits and Asiatic hybrid lilies with coloured flowers.