2. Materials and Methods
The present study on the effect of hot air oven and microwave oven drying on dry flower quality of Dutch roses
was carried out in the laboratory of Department of Horticulture, College of Agriculture, University of
Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, Karnataka, India. Four cultivars of Dutch roses viz., Yellow variety ‘Skyline’,
Orange variety ‘Lambada’, Pink variety ‘Ravel’ and Red variety ‘First Red’ were used for the present study. All
the four cultivars belong to the class of Hybrid Teas. Main characteristics of these cultivars are production of
blooms on long canes, elongated buds and slow opening of flowers (Arora, 1990). The flowers were harvested at
half bloom stage (around fifty per cent of the petals open) in the morning hours between 8.00 and 9.00 am by