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EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT PRESERVATIVE SOLUTIONS AND PACKAGING MATERIAL FOR IMPROVING POST HARVEST QUALITY OF GLADIOLUS (Gladiolus grandiflorus) CUT SPIKES

Gladiolus is an important cut flower in the world, and its preference in Pakistan is next to roses. But the main problem that occurs in gladiolus is that it has short vase life. The present experiment was conducted with an objective to investigate the effect of four preservative solutions [distilled water, Sucrose (3%), AgNO3 (250 ppm), AgNO3 (250 ppm) + Sucrose (3%)] and packaging material on postharvest quality of three gladiolus varieties, “Tissue, White Prosperity and Alexandra”. Packaging material consists of control treatment (without packaging), packaging of cut spikes with 100 ppm acetic acid soaked cotton and packaging of polyethylene sheet after sucrose pulsing. The experiment was arranged as two factorial laid out according to completely randomized design (CRD) having three replications. Results showed that preservative solution having combination of AgNO3 (250 ppm) + Sucrose (3%) significantly improves days to open basal floret, floret opening percentage (%), bloom spread (inch), floret length (inch), floret diameter (inch), fresh spike weight (g), dry spike weight (g), fresh weight loss (%) and vase life (days). Moreover, this treatment was also effective in reducing the wilting (%) in all gladiolus varieties. However, for solution uptake (mL/spike) and solution balance (ml/spike), AgNO3 (250 ppm)alone gives the best results. For packaging treatment, the pulsing of a cut spike with 20% sucrose followed by polyethylene sheet wrapping proves to be effective. Among the varieties, Alexandra performed better for all quality parameters in comparison to White Prosperity and Tissue