VARIETY EVALUATION OF HIPPEASTRUM

The objective of breeders is to create new varieties that are better than the current.
At the time of introduction into the market only few information is available about production, keeping quality and other characters.
Variety evaluation is carried out by The Goverment Institute for Research on Varieties of Cultivated Plants in coöperation with research stations to provide growers of information.
Variety evaluation of Hippeastrum is done at the Glasshouse crops research station in Naaldwijk.

Important characters for Hippeastrum are bulb- and flowerproduction.
The last combined with keeping quality.
To collect the information about characters a complete growing schedule from partioning of bulbs into double scales till flowerproduction is carried out.

For two varieties ‘Red Lion’ and ‘Apple Blossom’ the results obtained in this way are presented in the table and figures.
The difference between these varieties are clear.
A longer growth period gave larger bulbs.
For ‘Red Lion’ this means also more stems, but this is not the case with ‘Apple Blossom’.

For variety evaluation of Hippeastrum the schedule gave within two and a half year a lot of information, that can be used by growers and whole salers of bulbs.

Table 1 – Number of bulbs per bulbsize of two Hippeastrum varieties after a growing period of 33 or 47 weeks

Variety

Weeks Bulbsize

Total

12 / 14

14 / 16

16 / 18

18 / 20

20 / 22

22 / 24

24 / 26

26 / 28

28 / 30

30 / 32

32 / 34

34 / 36

36 / 38

38 / 40

‘Apple Blossom’	33	15	12	13	23	30	43	64	82	47	10	0	0	0	0	339
	47	3	6	12	4	13	27	18	67	67	70	49	9	5	0	350
‘Red Lion’	33	9	6	12	12	10	18	29	52	51	49	24	11	1	0	284
	47	7	0	2	10	7	8	20	10	49	46	58	36	32	9	294

V International Symposium on Flower Bulbs

ir. A. de Gelder

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1990.266.35