- THE FLORICULTURE VEGETATIVE CUTTING INDUSTRY 157
boxes under plastic or in a room which can be gassed with MCP. A slight
delay in rooting is observed when geranium are treated with MCP (Serek
et al. 1998).
The packaging for cuttings includes perforated, polyethylene bags to
allow for ventilation of gases. When orders are filled, a dozen or more
bags, each containing 100 cuttings, are placed into cardboard boxes
containing a block of ice in the center in order to maintain cool tem-
peratures during transit. The boxes are labelled for postal delivery and
held in the cooler until the late afternoon, when they are placed into
refrigerated trucks and transported to the airport. Upon arrival at the
airport, an airline freight company takes control of the boxes and places
them in another cooler until the cargo compartment of the airplane is
ready to be filled later that same night. The airline then delivers the
boxes of cutting to the port-of-entry for the importing country, where-
upon an independent freight handler is responsible for delivering the
boxes to the country’s inspection service in the morning. Once the cut-
tings pass inspection for diseases and pests, the boxes are transported
by airfreight or truck to customers, which takes another day or two for
a total of 48–72 h from cutting harvest to delivery at the customer’s
greenhouse.
Upon arrival, the greenhouse will remove the cuttings from the boxes
and place them on shelving inside of a cooler. While a 5◦C cooler is
optimal for geranium, often the temperature is 10◦C due to the presence
of chilling-sensitive species in the cooler. Ideally, the grower is able to
stick all of the cuttings into the propagation greenhouse on the day of
arrival, but due to the volume of cuttings, 2–3 d may be required. So,
while it is possible for geranium cuttings to be cut, shipped and stuck
in propagation in just 2 d, this process can take up to 1 week. Increased
time in the postharvest environment invariably reduces cutting
performance.
The propagation environment for geranium consists of an under-
bench heating system to provide a propagation medium temperature
of 20–23◦C. The cuttings are inserted into individual cells consisting of
peat moss, or some other propagation medium, at a density of∼ 300
cuttings/m^2. Prior to insertion, rooting hormone may be applied to
decrease the time of rooting and increase uniformity of rooting. The
base of the stem can be dipped into a powder containing 1000 ppm
IBA, or the foliage of cuttings can be sprayed following insertion with
a solution consisting of 300–500 ppm of the potassium salt formula-
tion of IBA. Rooting hormone can increase leaf yellowing of geranium
leaves by increasing the sink strength of the base of the cutting stem. In
contrast, BA and/or GA are often applied to cuttings immediately after