Soilless culture media for Lilium ‘Sorbonne’

In this study we selected Lilium ‘Sorbonne’ as a test species to investigate the possibility of using agricultural and forestry waste to replace peat as the growth medium. We used the mixture of V（peat）︰V（perlite）=7︰3 as a control, which is now commonly used for the production of lily cut flowers in China. The results showed that physical and chemical characteristics of the medium 3(V（peat）∶V（vermiculite）∶V（perlite）∶V（wheat straw）=5∶1∶2∶2), medium 4(V（peat）∶V（sand）∶V（perlite）∶V（corn straw）=4∶1∶2∶3) and medium 5(V（coir）∶V（vermiculite）∶V（sand）∶V（perlite）=3∶2∶3∶2) met the general requirements for soilless culture. The integrated performance, including plant height, number of leaves, size of flower buds, development of root systems, biomass accumulation and postharvest quality of the plants grown in the three media (3, 4 and 5) was significantly higher than that of the control. Plants grown in the medium 3 performed the best. Therefore, the three growth media can be used to reduce peat consumption and decrease the substrate cost by 13%-47%.