Abstract:
Gladiolus, the queen of bulbous flowers belonging to family lridiaceaeis one of the most important and popular cut flower. Gladiolus occupies the first place in the international floriculture trade (Ghanie/ at. 2008). Gladiolus has long lasting flower stalks, attractive colors and numerous forms which make its higher consumer demand in the market. In Sri Lanka, only few farmers have tended to cultivate gladiolus as a commercial crop. Due to high vulnerability to the diseases and pests and unavailability of high quality disease free planting materials, flower growers dis-incline to cultivate gladiolus in their fields. Therefore, mass production of high quality planting materials and continuous supply are essential to promote the gladiolus cultivation in Sri Lanka. Gladiolus is vegetative propagated by corms and cormlets, which is a time consuming method due to very slow rate of mu Itiplication and disease factors (Torabi-Giglou and Hajieghrari. 2008). la vitro propagation methods become a viable alternative to the conventional propagation methods and are widely used for producing high quality disease free planting materials. There Fore, present study was undertaken to develop a protocol for lit vitro propagation of gladiolus by studying the effect of sterility and different hormone combinations for direct and indirect organogenesis
