Commercial Floriculture

Post harvest technology

• Immediately after cutting the stem should be dipped in clean water upto the neck or base of the flower bud. The delay in keeping the cut flowers in water will leads to air entry and results in vascular blockage.

1. Pre-cooling:
• In a cold storage at the temperature of 4.4-7.2oC the flowers have to be kept immediately after harvesting to remove latent heat which enhances the keeping quality of flowers
• Then they have to be dispatched to market with maintaining cold chain
• It should be transported to Airport by ‘Refrigerated Van’ and store them in cold storage at airport and directly shifted to refrigerated cargo frights.
• Usually pre-cooling is done for 6-8 hours in winter and 8-12 hours in summer.

2. Pulsing:
• Treating of cut flowers with 2-4% sucrose solution for 3-4 hours. This intern makes the cut flower very hardy and turgid to improve the quality of cut flowers, also have lees neck bending.

3. Grades:
• The flowers which are in uniform stem length and developing flower buds should be grouped together at the time of cutting and kept them in separate container.
• For easy handling the basal foliage and thorns may be removed up to 20 cm at the time of cutting of the flowers.
• It is necessary to dispatch the flowers within 24-30 hours after harvesting.

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4. Packing:
• The graded cut blooms have to be packed in corrugated cardboard boxes (CCB).
• The size of the boxes varies with the quality and quantity of roses to be packed.
• A box of 100cm length x 32.5cm width and 6.5cm height will accommodate 80 roses of 65-70cm long stem.
• The inside area of the box is lined with thin polythene film and very fine newspaper. Moist tissue papers are spread out end to end of the box to provide a cushion to blooms.
• The blooms are generally packed in bundles of 20 each and bundles are tied with string or rubber band
• The upper portion of the each bundle having flower buds and are wrapped in a corrugated paper which is fixed with an adhesive tape or rubber sheet.
• The labeling of cultivars is made on the paper. The lower half of the bundle is wrapped with tissue paper.
• Two bundles are placed opposite to one another all along the length of the boxes in such a way that their flower buds will face the side of the box and their stem end towards the center of the boxes and at the sides there will be cushioning have to be provided.
• After this the stem ends of two bundles on either side are secured firmly with a wooden stick fixed along the width of the box.
• This wooden stick is placed over a strip of foam rubber to avoid damage of stem.
• The inside of the box is finally covered with a sheet of tissue paper before putting the cover of the box.
• Labeling is done with all details includes cultivars, colour, stem length, number of flower/bundle, total quantity of flowers in a box and the firm etc.
• All along the outer edges of the boxes either adhesive tapes or plastic tying strips with tying machine
• The final box will weighs about 5-6 kg.
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