Postharvest Information

A crop is at its highest quality at the time of harvest and must be properly handled to minimize the loss in quality. To maintain quality during marketing and in the final consumers location, cut flowers must be handled and stored at the correct temperature (as cold as possible), have a high carbohydrate level (use floral preservatives), and be free of water stress, ethylene, and microbial contamination.

Postharvest Testing

In-house postharvest testing is valuable in identifying where problems occur within an operation, handling customer complaints, and providing your customers with current postharvest information. A postharvest testing system does not need to be elaborate and should take only a few minutes to set up and monitor each day. In fact, the simpler the system, the more consistent and useful the results are likely to be. A postharvest test facility for cut flowers can be in the lunch room or a countertop in the office. In setting up a testing system for cut flowers or foliage, obtain clean bottles or vases. Use the same preservatives and water as normally used in the operation. For a new species, the easiest test is to place half of the flowers in water as a control treatment and the other half in water plus preservative. For current crops, compare a few untreated flowers to a few flowers after treatment, which will allow you to determine if your handling procedures are effective. Place the flowers in an area permanently set aside for the postharvest tests. Check the flowers each day; note which flowers are no longer acceptable and record the number of days from harvest to the end of vase life. The stems can be individually tagged with the harvest date and treatment by using small stickers or paper tags with string.

Floral Preservatives

The efficacy of floral preservatives will vary greatly with the water quality and species. Be sure to test preservatives to find the ones that are best for your operation. Always follow mixing directions as floral preservatives can be either ineffective or detrimental if supplied to the flowers in the wrong concentration. Flowers will be damaged if the preservative is too concentrated and the biocide will be too dilute to be effective if the floral preservative concentration is too low. Several types of commercial floral preservatives can be used:

Postharvest Trial Reports

Postharvest Reports by Species