Scientific Papers Series B Horticulture

Scientific Papers. Series B, Horticulture. Vol. LVII, 2013Print ISSN 2285-5653, CD-ROM ISSN 2285-5661, Online ISSN 2286-1580, ISSN-L 2285-5653STUDY OF APPLYING DIFFERENT TREATMENTS ON CUTALSTROEMERIA AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE SHELF LIFESzidónia KOSZEGHI, Endre KENTELKYSapientia University Department of Horticulture, 1/C, Calea Sighisoarei, 540485, Târgu Mures,RomaniaAbstractCorresponding author email: szidoo@yahoo.comThe importance of cut flowers and flower arrangements vary according to the standard of living. If the standardincreases, the demand for beautiful, more expensive flower arrangements grows as well. At low standard of living, thecostumers give up on, or reduce the acquisition of flowers considered, in this particular case, a luxury. Thus it isessential to know how long the flower can be a decoration, for how many days it stays fresh and beautiful, because ittakes time to get the flowers from the grower to the shops and in our vase, which shortens their lifespan considerably.Another important aspect is the way in which we handle the flowers wilted during transportation and not recoveredeven after putting them into fresh water. What does salt, sugar or grandma’s copper penny have to do with?Objectives: The purpose of my thesis is the prolongation of the lifespan of the cut Alstroemeria. During our experimentwe’ll analyze the effect of some Hungarian and Dutch floral preservatives on the Alstroemeria. The results will then becompared while monitoring the life processes of the flowers in question.Key words: cut flowers, Alstroemeria, vase life, Bioplant, Chrysal, Oasis.INTRODUCTIONIt is vital to consider the prolongation of thelife of cut flowers when harvesting,transporting, storing, handling them in theflower shop, during work with flowerarrangements or even putting them in a vase inour home. For the prolongation of its vase life,it is essential to know the life conditions andthe life process relevant to the plant. Inorganicnutrients, water, light, air – carbon-dioxide andoxygen in particular – and the right temperatureare absolutely essential to the growth anddevelopment of the plant.The organic materials thus produced during thetransformation – assimilation-in the leaf, arepartly used for the plant structure, another partis dissolved during breathing and internalenergy producing, then eliminated (as water,oxygen, carbon-dioxide, ethylene, etc.), orstored. From our point of view the storedorganic materials are the most important(Szabó and Hegyi, 2005).As soon as the cut flower runs out of one of thetwo substances it starts to fade immediately.First the water is consumed. If put in water intime the flower uses its sugar supplies in orderto live (Schmidt, 2001).333We can assure the undisturbed life process ofthe cut flower by means of floral preservativesand salts (Klincsek, 1990).Basically any preservative should have thefollowing ingredients: nutrients (proteins,mainly simple sugars),disinfectants againstmicro-organisms, growth regulator substances,surface tension reducing substances (increaseswater absorption) (Schmidt, 2001).Lack of hygiene causes development of microorganismsleading to water turbidity and badsmell (The Beauty of Chrysal, 2009).MATERIALS AND METHODSThe experiment took place at the UniversitySapientia, the Faculty of Technical and HumanSciences in Târgu Mures in the laboratory ofornamental plants.Altroemeria aurantiaca „Virginia” was cut on30 th October 2011 and arrived from theNetherlands on November 4. Following thepreparation of the solution and the cut, we put10 threads in each vase. They faded onNovember 22, so the experiment lasted 19days.During the experiment we used three of thebest known solutions used for conservation,