The Effects of Photoperiodism on Growth and Flowering of Marigold (Tagetes erecta)

Abstract

Photoperiod is one of the environmental signals that controls of the flowering time on bedding plants. Marigold is a bedding plant which includes obligate or facultative short day and day neutral cultivars. Flowering time of these plants, even day neutral cultivars, delay in extreme hot and long day condition in summer. In this study, the effects of photoperiodic conditions (short day and long day) on flowering and growth of two different day neutral marigold cultivars (Discovery Orange and Discovery Yellow) were investigated. Natural day length (14 hours) was considered as long day condition. Short day condition (8 hours) was conducted artificially by darkening treatment. Therefore, duration to first flower bud formation, duration to first flowering, plant canopy height, plant canopy width, lateral branch number, flower number, main peduncle length, main peduncle thickness, root collar thickness, stem thickness, dry weights of plants (root, shoot, total plant) were evaluated. At the end of the experiment, it was determined that short day conditions reduce duration to first flower bud formation and duration to first flowering. The artificial short day conditions resulted as 13 days early flowering in 'Discovery Orange' and 5 days early flowering in 'Discovery Yellow' cultivar.