Vase Life Characteristics of Gerbera as Influenced by BA and GA3

Gerbera (Gerbera jamesonii) widely used as a decorative garden plant, is a member of the Compositae family. Due to high temperatures and humidity, the post-harvest vase-life of gerbera is very less. Keeping quality is an important parameter for evaluation of cut flower quality so the addition of chemical preservatives to the holding solution is recommended to prolong the vase-life. Gerbera variety Palmbeach was grown in the poly house of AICRP and experiment was conducted under laboratory condition at the Department of Post Harvest Technology, BCKV, West Bengal. Uniform stalk length was maintained about 30 cm. and after cut, they were weighed and subjected to pulsing treatment with a freshly prepared chlorine solution (100 ppm) from sodium hypochlorite (4%) and AgNO3 solution (100 ppm) separately. After 24 hours of pulsing treatment all the cut stems were then kept in vase preservative solutions Benzyladenine (BA) comprising T1(20 ppm), T2(10 ppm), T3(5 ppm), T4(tap water) and Gibberellic acid (GA3) comprising T1(20 ppm), T2(10 ppm), T3(5 ppm), T4(tap water) treatments separately. The experimental design was laid out in Completely Randomized Design with five replications. The increased vase life of 9 days, with delayed flower drooping, petal discolouration and petal fall was observed with flowers which were pulsed with chlorine (100 ppm) followed by keeping in BA (10 ppm) as well as the maximum vase life of 10.8 days was noted with flowers which were pulsed with silver nitrate with delayed petal discolouration, petal fall and flower drooping was observed with GA3 (10 ppm) among the different vase preservatives containing GA3. The result showed that pulsing with silver nitrate (100 ppm) is more effective than chlorine (100 ppm) and among the growth regulators, the performance of GA3 was much better than BA which was pulsed with silver nitrate in the maintenance of the postharvest quality and shelf life. The performance of BA treatment was comparatively better which were pulsed with chlorine (100 ppm).