Evaluation of different French marigold (Tagetes patula L.) genotypes

Abstract

The investigation was conducted to evaluate the performance of various French marigold (Tagetes patula L.) cultivars with regard to their growth, flowering, yield and quality attributes. A field experiment was conducted at experimental field of Department of Floriculture and Landscape Architecture, University of Horticulture Sciences, Bagalkot during December to March 2021. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design with 25 genotypes which are replicated twice. The results revealed, genotype Pusa Arpita showed maximum plant height (50.54 cm), stem girth (13.35 mm), number of primary branches (22.4), leaf length (18.87 cm), leaf width (14.10 cm) and shelf life (4.95 days), IIHRFm-411 genotype exhibited higher plant spread (55.57 cm in E-W and 52.27 cm in N-S), number of secondary branches (44.5), flower yield per plant (392.10 g), per plot (10.19 kg) and flower yield per ha (16.01 t). Pusa Deep recorded highest number of flowers per plant (170.7), individual flower weight (4.27 g) and flower diameter (45.03 mm) were found maximum in IC-250322-01. UHSFm-10 took minimum days to first flower appearance (26.5 days), UHSFm-8 recorded minimum days to 50% flowering (32.5 days) and flowering duration maximum in IC-250322 (49 days).