Cultivar Effects on Growth, Yield and Cormel Production of Gladiolus (Gladiolus Grandiflorus L.)

Gladiolus (gladiolus grandiflorus l.), a popular bulbous cut flower,has high demand in both domestic (pakistani) as well as international markets.five potential, exotic cultivars of gladiolus, ‘cantate’, ‘corveira’, ‘eminence’,‘essential’ and ‘fado’ were evaluated to determine the cultivar effects on yieldand quality, to compare their relative performance and recommend theirsuitability for commercial production. among the tested cultivars, ‘essential’performed best for early spike emergence (74.2 d), greater number of leavesplant-1 (8.8), number of florets spike-1 (13.9), spike length (46.8 cm), spikediameter (1.0 cm), vase life (14.3 d), cormel diameter (0.7 cm) and averageweight of a cormel (0.3 g). ‘corveira’ ranked second for most of the abovementioned growth and yield indices. earlier sprouting (4.6 d), and highernumber of cormels clump-1 (283.0) was recorded in ‘fado’, while leaf area andstem length was greater in ‘cantate’, (98.6 cm2 and 84.7 cm, respectively).‘eminence’ ‘cantate’ and ‘corveira’ had higher total leaf chlorophyll contents(0.2 mg g-1 each), while ‘eminence’ took longer time for spike emergence(103.5 d) among all tested cultivars. in summary, ‘essential’ followed by‘corveira’ and ‘fado’ performed better than ‘eminence’ and ‘cantate’.therefore, growers may consider selection of these cultivars with improvedyield and quality characteristics for commercial production.