Progeny Test of Crosses among Different Cultivars of Gladiolus

Gladiolus grandiflora Hort. belongs to Iridaceae family and it is one of the most important cut flower and bulb in the world. Fragrance, long vase life and color variation make it different in floriculture. Breeding and introduction of new cultivars with innovation in ornamental are important. The aim of this research was of introducing new hybrids of gladiolus through hybridization. Four cultivars in Amsterdam, White prosperity, Advance red and Rose supreme were chosen for hybridization. Progenies were evaluated in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The Research was conducted in Ornamental Plants Reserch Center (OPRC) in Mahallat from 2015 to 2016. Quantitative traits included leaf length, leaf width, stem diameter, number of leaf, days to germination, weight and diameter of cormelet. Finally, statistical parameters such as coefficients of correlation, mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variability, principal component analysis and cluster analysis were estimated. Analysis of variance among progeny (hybrids) showed that the progeny has significant differences (p≤0.01) in all traits and a wide variation in progenies was observed for all traits. NIOP9 progeny in leaf length, leaf width, stem diameter, number of leaf, days to germination, weight and diameter of cormelet was superior progenies compared to other cormelet. Lilcewise, progeny NIOP4 with 2.49 per seed was superior to cormelet. Correlation coefficients among the different progenies revealed that the most positive and significant correlation was between the number of leaves and crown diameter (r= +0.93) and the lowest level (r= -0.17) of correlation was found between the number of days to germination and number of cormelet. The highest coefficient of phenotypic variation of 57.17% was obtained for the number of cormelet and the lowest of 11.15% for the number of days to germination. The highest heritability in traits was estimated as 98.46 and 96.46% for the number of cormelet and cormelet diameter, respectively and the lowest as 12.90% for the crown diameter. All traits showed significant differences in progeny. These results indicate that the major traits in the phenotypic and genetic diversity coefficient were very low, indicating that they had less environmental effects, since the progeny was cultivated under similar and controlled conditions (greenhouse).