Effect of Two-week High-temperature Treatment on Flower Quality and Abscission of Rosa L. ‘Belinda’s Dream’ and ‘RADrazz’ (KnockOut®) under Controlled Growing Environments

Abstract

The decline in sales of garden roses can, in part, be attributed to the lack of well-adapted cultivars. Successful selection for any trait requires an accurate phenotyping protocol. Apart from field screening, a protocol for phenotyping high-temperature tolerance in garden roses is yet to be established. An experiment was conducted to determine the stage of development when flowers were most sensitive to high-temperature stress. Liners of Rosa L. ‘Belinda’s Dream (BD) and the Knock Out® rose ‘RADrazz’ (KO) were planted in a soilless medium and grown in a greenhouse. Established plants were pruned retaining several nodes with leaves on two main shoots and treatments started. The experiment was conducted in growth chambers held at either 24/17 °C (control) or 36/28 °C (stress) day/night temperatures. Six time and duration temperature treatments included 8 weeks of continuous control conditions, 8 weeks of continuous stress conditions, and four sequential 2-week high-temperature shock treatments. Continuously stressed plants flowered in the least amount of days but did not differ from the continuous control-treated plants based on nonlinear thermal unit accumulation until flowering. Both cultivars had a 70% reduction in flower dry weight under continuous stress conditions. Flowers were most sensitive to high-temperature stress at the visible bud stage, which corresponds to Weeks 5 to 6 and Weeks 7 to 8 for BD and Weeks 3 to 4 and Weeks 5 to 6 for KO, respectively. KO was more resistant to flower abscission than BD when treated at the visible bud stage, but no difference in flower dry weight reduction between BD and KO was found. The number of vegetative nodes to the flower was unaffected by treatment and differed between the cultivars.