RESEARCHES ON SELECTIVE BREEDING OF NEW CULTIVARS AND FLOWER FORCING EFFECTS OF GA₃ ON CAMELLIA ROSTHORNIANA

Two new ornamental cultivars, ‘Tianshanxue’ with snow-white flowers and ‘Tianshanfen’ with pink flowers, were selected for their multiflora and fragrant flowers, elegant round tree shape, and high resistance from wild plants of Camellia rosthorniana Hand.-Mazz. in Wuhan, Hubei Province.
Both cultivars blossom from late February to late March, which misses Chinese Spring Festival.
Therefore, we studied the flower forcing technology for ‘Tianshanfen’ by the use of GA₃ in order to enrich Chinese New Year Flower products.
The results indicated that GA₃ spraying was superior to other treatments in flower buds development and easy operation. 600-1500 mg/L GA₃ had effects on promoting flower buds development and 800 mg/L GA₃ was the most effective concentration.
In conclusion, the method of 800 mg/L GA₃ spraying to flower buds once weekly continually for 6 times on flower forcing of ‘Tianshanfen’ was proven effective, and plants bloomed four months ahead of the natural flowering date.

International Conference on Germplasm of Ornamentals

L. Xu, X.M. Ji, J. Tong, F.Z. Chen, K.B. Du, Y.F. Xie, W.D. Chen, Y. Zhou, C.X. Guo, Q. Tan

new Camellia cultivars, flower forcing, Chinese New Year Flowers, GA₃

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2013.977.9