Cut roses often have a short vase life due to water stress and ethylene damage under unfavorable postharvest conditions. In this study, we investigated the effect of various pretreatment solutions on the vase life and postharvest quality of the cut rose cultivar ‘Jinny’ (Rosa hybrida L.). Cut roses were pretreated with eight different preservative solutions for 10 hours: aluminum sulfate (AS), Chrysal (CHR), FloraLife (FLR), lysosome (LYS), MS-1 (MS1), MS-2 (MS2), silver n itrate ( SN), a nd s ilver t hiosulfate ( STS). We found that pretreatment with all solutions except LYS prolonged the vase life and improved the postharvest quality of the cut roses. Among these, STS was the most effective pretreatment solution, significantly extending the vase life from 11.8 days (control) to 19.9 days, retaining the initial fresh weight and a positive water balance for longer, and inhibiting microbial growth in the vase. STS also enhanced the water uptake rate, and maintained the high chlorophyll and soluble sucrose contents in the leaves of the cut rose flowers. In addition, we found that MS1 and MS2, which are natural plant extracts, had strong antimicrobial effects and consequently prolonged the vase life of cut roses by more than 4 days compared with the control. Therefore, MS1 and MS2 can be considered as alternative preservatives in the cut flower industry.

Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium) is one of the most popular ornamental species in the world due to the great diversity of inflorescence form and color. There has been increasing demands for various types of chrysanthemums, such as cut flowers, potted plants and bedding plants. However, the genomic studies of this species have been not extensively conducted relative to other ornamental species due to high levels of polyploidy (2n = 4x =36 or 2n = 6x = 54) and heterozygosity as well as large genome size. In this work, we developed a molecular tool for cultivar identification using simple sequence repeats (SSRs) and investigated genetic diversity in 127 chrysanthemum cultivars. Of the 150 SSR primer pairs tested in this study, 62 primers were obtained from previous studies, while 88 primers were designed using the unigene sequences of C. nankingense and the Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) sequences of C. morifolium in the NCBI database. Thirty SSR primers were selected based on polymorphism and banding patterns in a subset of 8 cultivars and used to amplify the DNA of 127 chrysanthemum cultivars. The UPGMA dendrogram based on these 30 SSR markers showed that most of chrysanthemum cultivars were divided into five clusters. These results will benefit chrysanthemum research community to develop elite cultivars.