Plant Growth and Post-harvest Life of Cut Gladiolus as Influenced by Zinc Level and Corm Grade

Gladiolus is one of the most beautiful, attractive, widely cultivated and economically important flowering plants worldwide including India. The research work was carried out to investigate the effect of corm grade and soil application of zinc sulphate on growth and post-harvest parameters of gladiolus cv. Malaviya Kundan at the Horticulture Research Farm and Post-Harvest Laboratory of Department of Horticulture, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. In an experiment seven different grades of mother corm (1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0 cm) and zinc sulphate at three levels (15 and 30 kg/ha) along with control were used. Zinc was applied in soil at the time of field preparation. Experiment was replicated four times in Randomized Block Design. Application of ZnSO4 at 15 kg/ha was found beneficial for various growth parameters, whereas, 30 kg/ha was found beneficial for most of the post-harvest parameters. Maximum plant height and duration of flowering was achieved with ZnSO4 at 15 kg/ha, whereas, application of ZnSO4 at 30 kg/ha resulted in maximum length of the spike, total number of florets opened and total uptake of water in vase. Among the various grades, the largest corm grade, i.e. 4.0 cm was found to be the best for growth parameters. Whereas, corm grade 3.0 cm was found to be the best in respect of various post-harvest parameters. Lowest corm grade i.e. 1.0 cm failed to exhibit flower due to small size of propagule.