Quality cut flowers, specifically two to three flowers and strong
60 cm stems, of Asiatic lily hybrid ‘Beni no Mai’ can be produced
when mature bulbils weighing about 400 mg are harvested 40–50
DAA are treated with a sequential temperature treatment (SEQ CD)
14 to 20 days each at 5–15 ◦C or 20–5 ◦C. Plants can be produced
in about 300 days from the potting of treated bulbils. This long
growing period can be divided into two phases: the first phase
for adopting plug production from potting the treated bulbils to
senescence of scaly leaves and to shoot emergence that lasts about
200 to 230 days followed by the second phase from shoot emergence
to flowering that lasts about 90 to 100 days. The increase in
the number of flowers results from the increased shoot apex size
and not from the changes in soluble and cell wall neutral sugars.
Breeding and selection of new cultivars that produce bulbils and
respond to alternating temperatures before and after potting will
allow production of quality lilies in the greenhouse in less than a
year, by-passing the field production phase.
Acknowledgment
We express our thanks to Dr. L.C. Stephens for critical review,
comments, and editing the manuscript, and Ji Hee Kim for assisting
in data analysis. Part of the present research was supported by the
research fund of Dankook University awarded to J.K. Suh in 2011.