Evaluation of the growth, flower quality, yield and vase life of gerbera (Gerbera jamesonii L.) cultivars under open ventilated saw-tooth type polyhouse

Cultivation of crops under protected conditions can enhance the yield and quality of agricultural produce. Gerbera is one of the high-value cut flowers which can be commercially cultivated under greenhouse conditions in tropical and subtropical regions. The choice of commercially viable cultivars is essential for obtaining its marketability. Moreover, cultivars of gerbera should be highly productive. Considering the above facts, the present study was conducted in 2020-2022 in the Protected Cultivation Unit of the Centurion University of Technology and Management where 10 cultivars were chosen as treatments. They were Intense, White house, Stanza, Dune, Dana-ellen, Artist, Sunway, Silvester, Pre-intenzz and Ankur. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design and replicated three times. The data collected on the growth parameters, quality, yield, and vase life revealed that among all the cultivars of gerbera, Dana-ellen showed its superiority over others in terms of plant height and number of leaves (49.3 cm and 31.0 at 120 days after sowing respectively), days to first flowering (84.3), flower stalk length (64.8 cm), flower stalk girth (67.2 cm), ray floret length (8.7 mm) and suckers per plant (3.4); however, it remained on par with Dune, Intense, and Silvester in expression of most of the crop parameters. Similarly, the same variety Dana-ellen registered the highest yields (27.3, 33.7 and 34.7 flowers per plant during first, second and third years of the study respectively) among all the cultivars. Moreover, the variety Dune recorded the maximum vase life of 8.4 days and 9.2 days with citric acid and sucrose solutions, respectively. The study concluded that the cultivation of Dana-ellen, Dune, Silvester, and Artist under open-ventilated saw-tooth polyhouse conditions can be commercially viable for achieving higher flower quality and yield.