Yalek Messar, Ranjan Srivastava, Rishu Sharma, Ajit Kumar, B.D. Bhuj and Sunder Pal
Abstract
The present investigation was carried out to study the floral biology of six gladiolus varieties during the year 2012-13 to 2013-14. Significant differences were observed for all the growth and flowering characters during experimentation. The two years pooled data revealed that maximum plant height (96.90 cm) was recorded in variety American Beauty. Variety American Beauty was also found superior with respect to qualitative parameters like floret size (11.37 cm), florets per spike (16.25), spike length (81.64 cm) and early flower spike initiation (59.04 days). Anthesis was completed on the same day. Anthesis was early and it started from 8.02 a.m. in the variety American Beauty and it was late in the variety Jester (10.28 a.m.). Anther dehiscence started simultaneously with anthesis in the variety Nathan White, Careless and Red Beauty whereas in other varieties, anther dehiscence took place 1-2 hrs after anthesis. The variation in stigma receptivity was found to be non-significan among different varieties under study. Pollen viability was observed maximum in Nathan White (64.95%) followed by Nathan Red (64.45%) while the minimum viability of the pollen was observed in variety Red Beauty (56.69%). Variety American Beauty recorded minimum number of pollens per flower (33.07 ×104).