Pre-plant bulb dips for height control in LA and Oriental hybrid lilies.

摘要

Height control is a crucial element for successful production of containerized lilies (Lilium sp.). While it has long been known that preplant dips in chemical plant growth regulators can be effective for height control, new active ingredients, newcultivars, and new classes of lilies have necessitated a reexamination of this technique for height control. The advantages of preplant PGR dips are time and labour savings, accurate dosages, reasonable cost and perhaps most important, legality (at leastin the United States), while the disadvantages include treatment application well before there is a known height excess and questions of disposal of the used dip solution (environmental concerns). In this work, we investigated several commercial products (ancymidol, paclobutrazol and uniconazole) and a range of concentrations on the Oriental hybrid cultivars Aubade, Berlin, Sissi, Stargazer, Tom Pouce and Muscadet; and LA hybrid cultivars Royal Perfume, Best Seller, Royal Dream, Aladdins Dazzle, SalmonClassic and Royal Parade. From these experiments, we have determined that (1) bulb dips, especially with paclobutrazol and uniconazole, can be a highly effective means of height control, (2) LA hybrid lilies are much more sensitive than Oriental hybridsand require lower rates, (3) care to not overdose should be exercised in a commercial setting.