Effect of Plant Growth Regulators on Floral Characteristics and Vase Life of Gladiolus (Gladiolus grandiflorus L.) Cv. Saffron

The balanced development of plant is governed by the growth regulators those are being increasingly utilized to manipulate the growth and flowering of ornamental plants. An experiment was conducted to study the effect of growth regulators viz., GA3 (100, 200 and 300 ppm), BAP (50, 100 and 150 ppm) and MH (250, 500 and 750 ppm) on growth and flowering of gladiolus varieties saffron with Randomized Block Design. The results showed that, the minimum days to spike emergence, days to first floret open/bloom, days to 50% floret open, internodal length between floret, diameter of floret, number of florets and vase life was found best in treatment T3 (GA3 @ 200 ppm) followed by treatment T2 (GA3 @ 100 ppm) and T4 (GA3 @ 300 ppm) whereas duration of flowering in days found best in treatment T4 (GA3 @ 300 ppm) followed by T2 (GA3 @ 100 ppm) and T3 (GA3 @ 200 ppm) and number of spike per plant found highest in treatment T7 (BAP @ 150 ppm).