Commercial Floriculture

Methods of storage of cutflowers

There are 3-4 general methods of storage of flowers, they
1. Refrigerated storage: Most widely used method of storage of cut flowers. There are two types (a) Wet storage and (b) dry storage.
(a) Wet storage –
• Flowers stored with their bases dipped in water or preservative solution,
  
• Good for short duration, day to day handling,
  
• Stored at temperature at 2-4^oC.
(b) Dry storage –
• Flowers are sealed in plastic bags to prevent loss of moisture.
Flowers are sealed in plastic bags to prevent loss of moisture.
• More laborious but hold the flowers for longer duration.
• Pre-cooling and pulsing before dry storage is important.
  
• Stored at 0.5-1 ^o C is ideal for most flowers,
  
• For tropical flowers like anthurium, cattleya and poinsettia is 10-15^o C and
  
• For sub-tropical flowers like gladiolus, Strelitzia and anemone is 2-8^o C.

^Top

2. Controlled atmosphere storage (CA):
• Low temperature storage in gas tight chambers under decreased levels of oxygen (O₂) and increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂).
• CO₂ levels higher than 4% and O₂ level lower than 0.4 per cent causes injury and anaerobic conditions respectively.
• Different types of flowers cannot be store in the same room at the same time since the O₂ and CO₂ required for storage vary for different flowers and it is the one major limitation in CA storage.

3. Modified Atmosphere storage (MA):
• Less precise form of CA storage, the dry storage of flowers in sealed bags leads to reduction in O₂ and increase in CO₂ levels due to respiration of the tissue.
• Build up of very high level of CO₂ may cause damage to flowers.
  
• Flowers stored in partially permeable materials are beneficial.

4. Hypobaric or Low pressure storage (LPS):
• Storage at low atmosphere pressure under refrigerated conditions, continuous ventilation and high relative humidity.
  
• Rapid loss of water from tissues is major disadvantage and cost of installation is also high.

  The optimum storage temperature and duration of storage varies with flower type. The recommended commercial storage conditions for important flowers at 90-95% RH is as follows.
  ^Top

  Storage	Crop	Storage temperature (oC)	Maximum storage period (days)
  Dry	Carnation Chrysanthemum Gerbera Gladiolus Rose	0-1 0.5-1 2 4-5 0.5-2	16-24 21 2 5-7 7
  Wet	Anthurium Carnation Dendrobium Gerbera Gladiolus Tuberose Rose	13 0.5-1 5-7 4 4-5 7-10 2-3	14-28 21-28 10-14 4-7 7 3-5 5-7

  Top