Performance of gladiolus (Gladiolus hybridus Hort.) cultivars for flowering and flower quality

An experiment was under taken at experimental unit of Department of Floriculture and landscape gardening, Kittur Rani Channamma College of Horticulture, Arabhavi to evaluate gladiolus cultivars for flowering and flower quality. Among the nine cultivars studied, Cvs. Snow White, showed earliness in spike emergence and first floret opening (58.20 and 66.70 days) followed by American Beauty (60.67 and 68.13 days) while, delayed spike emergence and first floret opening was noticed in Cv. Magic (80.80 and 98.13 days). Cultivars Magic (110.00days), Trust(108.OOdays) and Vedanapoli (lOOdays) flowered for wider period of time while, cultivars Melody (85.1 ldays) and Sylvia (88.00days) flowered for shorter duration. Summer Sunshine (93.90cm), Melody (93.17) and Trust (89.61 cm) had longer spikes compared to other cultivars. However, Cv. Sylvia was inferior to all other cultivars by producing weaker and short stems with shorter rachis. More number of florets per spike was recorded in Cvs. Summer Sunshine (15.33), American Beauty (15.13), Yellow Cup (6.68) and Snow White (14.60). Cultivar Summer Sunshine produced large sized flowers (11.91 cm) followed by American Beauty (9.98cm) whereas, minimum was recorded in Sylvia (6.45cm). Among the cultivars studied, vase life was more in cultivars Summer Sunshine (8.33 days) American Beauty (7.68 days) Trust (7.67 days), Yellow Cup (6.68 days) and Melody (6.67days).