Abstract

An experiment was conducted to characterize anthurium cultivars under shade-net house in soil-less culture under Jorhat condition involving 12 cultivars viz., Tropical, Fire Calorie, Acropolis, Moments, Agnihotri, Cherry Red, Evita Red, Daniel, Evita Pink, Magic Pink arid Sweet Heart. Results indicated that morphological,traits contributing largely to the variability were those related to leaf colour, shape of sinus between posterior lobes of the leaves, overlapping of the posterior lobes of the spathe, shape of spathe and spadix and colour of spathe, spadix and flower stalk. The cultivars can be characterized into two distinct colour groups with respect to leaf colour. With respect to colour of the leaf stalk, all the cultivars exhibited similar colour. Three distinct groups were observed with respect to sinus between posterior lobes of leaves. The cultivars can be characterized into two groups based on shape of the spathe as well as type of its posterior lobe. The colour of the spathe was found to be different in different stages of flower growth viz., at the time of unfurling of spathe, at the time of complete unfurling of spathe and at the time of maturity in all the cultivars. Based on these stages, four, six and eight distinct colour groups-were obtained, respectively. Similarly, the shape of spadix was also found to be different in different stages of flower growth viz., at the time of unfurling of spathe and at the time of maturity and based on these, for both the stages, two distinct shapes of spadix were observed and cultivars were characterized, respectively. With respect to colour of flower stalk, four distinct groups were obtained.