Europäisches Journal für Experimentalbiologie Offener Zugang

Abstrakt

Improving the Vase Life of Cut Gerbera (Gerbera jamesonii L. cv. ‘Balance’)Flower with Silver Nano-particles

Zakiyeh Safa, Davood Hashemabadi and Behzad Kaviani

Gerbera is one of the ten most popular cut flowers in the world and according to global trends in floriculture, it occupies the forth place in cut flowers. In order to evaluate the effect of silver nano-particles on vase life and postharvest quality of cut gerbera cv. ‘Balance’, an experiment based on the completely randomized design with one factor; silver nano-particles in 4 levels (0, 5, 10 and 20 mg l-1) in three replications and 12 plots with 4 flowers per plot was done. Analysis of variance revealed that the effect of silver nano-particles on vase life, flower diameter decreasing index and loss of fresh weight was significant at 5% probability level. According to the mean comparisons, the maximum vase life and flower diameter decreasing index was obtained in 10 mg l-1 silver nanoparticles treatment and the minimum loss of fresh weight belonged to the 20 mg l-1 silver nano-particles treatment.