Floralife Research Update: Gerbera

Heads up for a brand new Floralife Research Update! This time, it’s “Efficacy of New Tablet Dose of Floralife® PRG 100 on cut Gerberas.” As you know, the Gerbera is one of the top cut flowers in floriculture industry. They have been around forever, we have studied and improved their breeding, but customers still experience inconsistent vase life.

However, there is a successful Gerbera treatment on the market: Floralife® PRG 100. It comes in a pill format designed to treat 4 liters of water. Floralife also introduced another size of the PRG tablet that treats 2 liters of water, using the same active ingredient.

Floralife set out to test the efficacy of the combination of Floralife® PRG 100 tablet (2 liter) as pre-treatment and Floralife Crystal Clear® as vase treatment for cut Gerberas.

We sourced three varieties of cut Gerberas from a farm and transported them dry to the Floralife lab. As soon as they arrived, we unpacked them, re-cut them and placed them in PRG solution (2 liter tablet) or in water (control).

We used 2 liters of the solution and a total of 80 stems in a bucket. We stored them in a cooler (2 – 3º C, 35 – 37º F) for 3 days. Then, we took the buckets out of the cooler and kept the Gerberas at room temperature for one day. We recut them, and placed them in vase solutions of 1 L (Floralife Crystal Clear® or water only). There were a total of 12 flowers in a vase (4 flowers per variety), and 3 vases per treatment combination. We placed the vases in a postharvest evaluation room (18 – 20º C, 64 – 68 º F, 12 hours of light, 12 hours of dark) to evaluate vase life.

And the results? Well, you will have to click here to find out! Short answer: it depends on the variety!

So, how’s your Gerbera business? Have you tried Floralife® PRG 100?