The effect of soilless methods on the growth and production of cut flowers of Gerbera plant in greenhouse agriculture

This work was carried out at the Abu Jarash farm, the laboratories of the Faculty ofAgriculture at Damascus University and the laboratories of the Arab Center forStudies of Arid zones and Dry lands (ACSAD), during the 2018. with the aim ofstudying the effect of soilless cultivation methods on production and qualityparameters “Average length and diameter of the flower holder, inflorescencediameter, number of flowers, flower vaselife and growth criteria “average plantheight, number of leaves, leaf area, stem diameter, number of shoots, root length,number of roots on the plant, wet and dry weights of flowers, vegetative and rootsystem, estimation of the concentrations of elements Minerals (N, P, K) in the leavesand (Ca) in the flower holder of the cut flowers of two gerbera varieties “Shamra andLisa” under greenhouse cultivation conditions.The results showed a significant superiority of the soilless cultivation technique (peatmoss) over the rest of the treatments "soil and hydroponics", and a significantsuperiority of the mixture "peat moss: perlite" and "peet moss: Pumice" in mostindicators of the study compared to the rest of the treatments, especially in terms ofaverage length and diameter, the diameter of the inflorescence and the averagevaselife, in addition to a significant increase in the number of leaves, and the area ofthe leaf surface, where the average diameter of the flowering inflorescence was (10.1and 9.63 cm, respectively) in the Shamra variety, and in the Lisa variety (11.13 and10.89, respectively).Treatment with Hoagland and Arnon Rea nutrient solution at ½X concentration andpH5 was significantly superior in terms of productivity, quality and growthparameters in both study varieties.Treatment with gibberellin, especially the concentration (100 ppm) led to animprovement in the productivity, quality and growth criteria in both types of study,and all the studied concentrations of gibberellin contributed to an increase in thediameter of the flowering inflorescence compared to the control and reached amaximum of (9.78 cm) when treated with a concentration of 200 ppm in Shamraflowers, and the length of the flower stand increased when treated with aconcentration of 100 ppm (67 and 35.5 cm) for both Lisa and Shamra flowers,respectively, while the treatment with gibberellin at a concentration of 100 ppmshowed a significant increase in the number of shoots to reach (4 and 4.25 successors/plant, respectively) for the Lisa and Shamra.