Abstract
The purposes of this study were to reveal problems in harvesting and shipping of carnations by a commercial grower in Ehime prefecture, and effects of low temperature storage on flower qualities, and to evaluate the adaptability of bud forcing treatment (Koyama and Uda 1994b) to accelerate in the rate of bud anthesis, designated as Bud Anthesis Acceleration (BAA) , to regulation of the shipping.HomePage
The commercial grower stored a lot of carnations in the cold storage and shipped them before Mother's Day; consequently, the daily number of shipped carnations became 2.8 times as many as the mean throughout the shipping period. Many tight buds, which were equal to 14% of the annual number of shipped carnations, remained in the glasshouse immediately after Mother's Day.
Low temperature storage made the pink of the petals a less vivid hue, and changed the leaf coloration to yellowish green. One week storage at 1oC induced low temperature injury on the petals. One week storage at 5oC lowered the flower diameter of the fully opened carnation and vase life.
BAA remarkably shortened the period from bud stages to optimum stage for shipping. BAA did not change petal coloration, but made the greenness of the leaves vivid. BAA from stage 1 lowered the flower diameter. BAA was not effective in extension of vase life. These results indicated that BAA was extremely useful to regulate the shipping of carnations, but it was necessary to improve the treatment conditions.Keywords: carnation, mother's day, bud anthesis acceleration, cold storage, shipping regulation, quality