Study on flowering characteristics and categorization of rose cultivars for color, fragrance and usage

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of rose cultivars and their categorization based on color, fragrance and use. Field experiment included forty four rose cultivars coded from V1 to V44. It was found that all rose cultivars varied significantly for the studied characters like number of shoots/plant, leaf area, chlorophyll content, number of flower/plant and petals per flower. Rose cultivars were categorized in nine groups in accordance to color, three groups in accordance to the fragrance and two groups in accordance usage excluding the wild type. V3 (Tajmahal), V4 (Yellow star), V14 (Lavender gold), V16 (Compassion), V21 (SAU hero), V23 (Yellow gold), V25 (Sleepy moon), V26 (Sweet doll), V30 (Chrysanthemum rose) and V35 (Sweet sakata) cultivars were found as the cut flowers and rest were pot/bedding flower. Among the 44 cultivars desired one could be isolated easily for the specific purpose. Roses are vegetatively propagated and they are selected for defined traits such as stem length, flower bud, flower number, flower size and flower qualities (shape, color, fragrance). Breeding to modify a single characteristic generally results in changes to other characters as well.