Abstract
We evaluated the germplasm collection of 21 wild-gladiolus species, which were native to southern Africa. Wide variations were observed in plant height, leaf length, leaf width, number of leaves, tepal color, diameter of floret and number of florets among species. Dwarf species could be suitable for pot culture, and blue gladiolus cultivars might be developed from wild species having blue tepals. More than half of these species (52.3%) produced a good scent. It was considered that some species of these collections could be highly valuable breeding materials. Important information for breeding, such as days to flowering, longevity of florets, days to seed setting and number of seeds per pod in these species, was also obtained in this study. Based on flow cytometric analysis, wild gladiolus species showed a fluorescence intensity 0.9-fold to 3.5-fold higher than that of rice plant. This observation indicated that the genome size of these species showed a wide distribution, and this information might be used for the estimation of hybridity in some cross combinations, though it was difficult to estimate the ploidy of wild species using flow cytometry.
