effects of essential oils, silver nanoparticles and some of the chemical compounds on vase life of gladiolus (gladiolus grandiflora l.) cut flowers

the aim of this research was to improve quality and vase life of cut gladiolus flowers. the investigation was done with the effects of different concentrations of essential oil of thymol and zataria oil (50 and 100 mg l-1) and silver nanoparticles (3 and 5 mg l-1) and 8-hydroxyquinolin sulfate (300 and 400 mg l-1) with sucrose 3%. in addition, distilled water, ethanol 500 mgl-1 and sucrose 3% were used as control treatments. cut flowers were pulsed for 24 h in different preservative solutions. in the research different characteristics like: vase life, bacteria count chlorophyll content, lipid peroxidation, protein content, peroxidase and catalase activity were studied. the results showed that vase life of cut flowers treated with 100 mgl-1 of each zataria and thymol essential oils treatments, increased to 13.6 and 12.8 days, respectively. also, silver nanoparticles in the concentrations of 3 mg l-1 and 8-hydroxyquinolin sulfate in the concentrations of 300 mg l-1 increased the vase life of cut flowers to 14.8 and 17.4 days, respectively