Evaluating of Genetic Variability for Quantitative Characters and Selection of Superior Single Plants for Propagation of them in Gladiolus Cultivars.

In order to study the genetic variability of morphological traits in cultivars gladiolus and selection single plant for reproduction, an experiment was conducted at National Research Station and Ornamental Plants- Mahallat for three years in 2005,2006 and 2007.The first year cultivars has collected and the second and third years the experiment was arranged in a Randomized Complete Block design with three replication.The treatments were concluding six cultivars naming Sefid Masti, Sefid, Sourati, Narenji and Zard Khaldar.There were highly significant differences among cultivars for days to blooming, days to flowering, plant height, number of floret per spike, length of leaf, diameter of flower, diameter of stem, weight of flower wet, number of cormlet and diameter of cormlet, but differences for period of flowering and width of leaf during two years were not significant.Most of studied traits indicated great variation among cultivars.The phenotypic coefficient of variation were greater than the genotypic ones, for all the traits though, the differences for most of them were small. The highest phenotypic and genotypic coefficient of variation, were obtained for number of floret per spike, diameter of stem, diameter of cormlet, respectively and the lowest coefficient found for days to blooming and days to flowering. The highest broadsence heritability were obtained for length of flowering spike, number of floret per spike, weight of flower wet and diameter of stem, respectively and the lowest broadsence heritability found for number of leaf.Genotypic and phenotypic correlations among the traits had similar trend and in most cases had little differences.The highest Genotypic and phenotypic correlations of positive were obtained between length of leaf and number of cormlet, days to blooming and days to flowering, length of leaf and weight of flower wet. In general, the results of this study indicate that there were great phenotypic and genotypic coefficient for most of the traits and selection might be effective for their improvement, and also Oskar cultivar in comparison to others cultivars was superior for the most traits and Sefid Masti was the least.