Evaluating Important Traits of Iris Germanica Hybrids to Identify Elite HybridsMohammad Hossein Azimi

Iris Germanica has become the most well-known flower for landscape planning due to its colorful flowers, reproduction by creeping rhizomes, flat leaves, and a trio of flower parts, resistance to calcareous soils and adverse environmental conditions, and low watering requirements. Given the pharmaceutical-ornamental importance of I. germanica, this research was conducted to find new hybrids and their significant traits. Diversity and innovation in the field of flowers and plants are good, the world is presented with hundreds of colors and varieties and given the importance of I. germanica, the management to achieve hybridization between the new hybrid was performed.

Three genotypes of I. germanica with brown and blue (female parent) and yellow (paternal line) colors were selected for hybridization out of a total of 15 progenies and three parents to be evaluated in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The research was conducted in Ornamental Plants Research Center (OPRC) in Mahallat from 2014 to 2016. Quantitative traits included leaf width, peduncle length, peduncle thickness, flower diameter, outer petal width, inner petal length, inner petal width, bush length, flowering branch diameter, and crown diameter. The statistical analysis was conducted in the SAS and Excel software packages. According to the instructions of UPOV, 10 quantitative traits and some statistical parameters such as simple correlation coefficients, estimates of broad sense heritability, phonotypical and genetically coefficient of variations were measured.

Results showed significant (P≤0.01) differences between genotypes in all studied traits, indicating wide variations in traits except for the flower diameter. The correlation coefficients of quantitative traits among genotypes (parents and progenies) showed the most positive and significant correlation between the diameter of flowering branch and crown diameter, peduncle length, and inner length of petal. The highest broad sense heritability was related to the outer petal width (96.28), inner petal length (93.66), and bush length (93.40) and the lowest was related to peduncle length (42.58). The findings indicated that hybrid NIOP8 had the highest stem diameter. It was also superior in crown diameter, flower branch diameter, and peduncle diameter versus the other hybrids. The results indicated that hybridization has a significant effect on the traits.

The hybrids NIOP5 and NIOP8 outperformed the other hybrids and parents significantly in the length of inner petal, the width of the inner petal, and leaf width.