Morphological Characterization of Tulip Cultivars at 1587m above Mean Sea Level under Kashmir Himalayas

Morphological characterization of tulip cultivars was carried out during 2018-19 at Division of Floriculture and Landscape Architecture SKUAST- K Shalimar with an objective to assess the genetic diversity on the basis of qualitative and quantitative traits of growth, flowering and propagation ratio. Results based on analysis of variance depict sufficient genetic diversity among the genotypes. The variability response for minimum to maximum values ranged (92.00 to 107.00) for days to bulb sprouting after planting (117.00 to 164.00) for days to flowering,( 4.70 to 8.20 cm) for flower diameter, (9.00 to 18.00) days for duration of flowering, (23.13 to 72.22) cm for Plant Height (cm), 3.5 to 6.50 for number of leaves per plant, (1.13 to 1.72) for number of bulbs plant-1- and 12.30 to 21.20g for bulb weight plant-1. However minimum days to sprouting 92.00 were recorded after planting resulted with cultivar first Sprout and also maximum days (107.00) were recorded with Royal virgin. Maximum days taken to flowering (164.00) were noticed with La courtine and minimum (117.00) with Royal virgin. Highest values for flower diameter 8.20 cm were recorded with Antartica whereas lowest (4.70cm) with Royal virgin. Duration of flowering resulted maximum18.00 days with cultivar La courtine and minimum 9.00 days with Royal virgin. Plant height (72.22cm), number of leaves (6.50) were observed maximum with cultivar La courtine where as minimum (23.13 cm) and (3.5 cm) respectively with Royal virgin. Maximum number ofbulbsplant-11.72 & Bulb weight plant-1 (21.20gm) were recorded with cultivar Happy generation where as minimum values (1.13 & 12.30gm) respectively with cultivar Royal virgin. It was concluded that highly significant varietal differences indicated the presence of high amount of variability. This morphological variability delaminated cultivars First proud, Happy generation Purple prince, Royal virgin, Triple A in early group, Antartica, Avenue, Darwiorange, Niigata (mid cultivars) and La courtine as late flowering cultivar.