Dimensões lineares da folha e seu uso na determinação do perfl vertical foliar de gladíolo

Abstract

Gladiolus, an important cut fower, is a herbaceous plant that has sword-shaped leaves. The objectives of this study are to determinate an empirical model to estimate the area of gladiolus leaves from its linear dimensions and to apply this model to estimate the vertical profle of leaf area in diferent position on the plant. A feld experiment was conducted in Santa Maria, RS, Brazil, with four gladiolus cultivars (Peter Pears, Rose Friendship, Jester and Amsterdam). A total of ffy leaves from each cultivar were collected and their width (C) and length (L) measured. Each leaves have then their area (AF) measured digitally. The relationship between area and dimensions of each leaf was ftted to a power model and the performance of the equations was evaluated by several statistics. Results indicates that the model AF = a. (C. L) is the best model to estimate leaf area in gladiolus, with a=0.664 for the four cultivars. Smaller leaves are ate the bottom and at the upper position and larger leaves are ate intermediate position on the plant.