Abstract:
Gladiolus (
Gladiolus grandiflorus
L.) is one of the most widely cultivated, economic
ally
important and common flowering plants worldwide inc
luding Pakistan. However, its yield
of flower is quite low when grown under agro-climat
ic conditions of Multan. A field
experiment was conducted at the Experimental Area,
Department of Horticulture,
Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan (Pakistan), d
uring 2010-2012 to investigate the
effect of micronutrients (B, Zn and Fe) on growth,
flower yield and quality of gladiolus cv.
Traderhorn
. Eight treatments comprised of either each micronu
trient alone or a
combination of Fe, B and Zn were applied. Corms wer
e planted within the first week of
November 2010, and 2011 on 60 cm apart ridges with
20 cm distance allowed within rows.
Twenty corms were planted in each treatment, of thr
ee replicates. Micronutrient sprays
were applied at 30 and 60 Days After Planting (DAP)
. Application of the micronutrients
significantly increased plant height, leaf chloroph
yll content, flower stalk length, flower
fresh weight, spike length, florets per spike, flor
ets’ fresh weight and diameter, flower
vase-life, flower diameter as well as fresh weight
of corms. Leaf number and days to spike
emergence were only influenced by a combined applic
ation of all the three
micronutrients. Among the micronutrient treatments,
the treatment containing
FeSO
4
.7H
2
O, H
3
BO
3
and ZnSO
4
.7H
2
O (all at 2%
level) performed the best for all the
parameters except for number of corm per plant, whi
ch was not affected significantly by
the foliar application of the micronutrients.
