Vol. 8, Issue 7 (2019)

Author(s):
Mangaiyarkarasi R and S Haripriya

Abstract:
India has very old and long tradition of flower cultivation. Floriculture in India is being viewed as a rapidly growing industry. The important floricultural crops in the international flower trade are rose, carnation, chrysanthemum, gerbera, orchids, anthurium, tulip, lilies, etc. All the flowers and ornamentals are the most perishable commodities needs special care during harvesting, handling, storage and transport. Due to perishable nature of flowers, there is huge post-harvest loss ranging from 30-50 per cent. In India, this could be on a higher side, which might be due to lack of knowledge on ‘post-harvest handling’ of cut flowers. These losses can only be minimized by proper handling, packaging, storage, marketing and processing of flowers. In this study, tuberose spikes were placed in different chemicals to improve shelf life stored in room and cold temperature under wet and dry storage conditions.