The effect of seaweed on the development of Gerbera jamesonii (Asteraceae)

Resumen

To evaluate the effect of seaweed on the development of gerbera (Gerbera jamesonii Bolus), an experiment under greenhouse conditions was conducted at the Department of Agricultural Production, University Center for Biological and Agricultural Sciences (CUCBA), in 2013. Sixty gerbera plants of the «Pink elegance» va- riety were used and seaweed was applied to the substrate as rec- ommended by the commercial products Alga 600, Seaweed and Osmocalm, setting aside controls. Treatments were applied by transplantation every 15 days a total of 7 times, following a completely randomized distributed design with 15 replicates. Analysis of variance and a Tukey mean comparison test (p≤0.05) were applied using the NCSS statistical pack- age. The variables evaluated were: number of leaves, number of flower stems, stem length (cm), and diameter of the capitulum (in cm). The average effect of the different

treatments on the variable number of leaves surpassed controls. Re- garding the number of stems, Alga 600 produced a higher amount than the other treatments (2). The length of stems in the treated plants exceeded controls (18.42 cm). Osmocalm produced the highest average length at 30.91 cm. The average value for the diameter of the capitula was lower in controls

(4.96 cm), as diameters up to 7.71 cm were observed with Osmocalm. Significantly, the second crop produced capitula diameters of up to 11.5 cm with Alga 600, and 11.7 cm with Seaweed.