Syracuse

Assessment of the visual quality of ornamental plants: comparison of three methodologies in the case of the rosebush

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Santagostini, Pierre | Demotes-Mainard, Sabine | Huché-Thélier, Lydie | Leduc, Nathalie | Bertheloot, Jessica | Guérin, Vincent | Bourbeillon, Julie | Sakr, Soulaiman | Boumaza, Rachid

Edité par CCSD ; Elsevier -

International audience. The quality of ornamental plants can be appraised with several types of criteria: tolerance to biotic andabiotic stresses, development potentialities and aesthetics. This last criterion, aesthetic quality, is spe-cific to ornamental plants and objective measurements are required. Three methodologies for measuringaesthetic quality have been proposed. The first involves classical measurements of morphological fea-tures, such as flower number and diameter or leaf size. The second is based on sensory methods recentlyadapted to ornamental plants. The third, used by the International Union for the Protection of New Vari-eties of Plants (UPOV) for distinctness, uniformity and stability (DUS) tests, is based on morphologicalcharacteristics calibrated on specific reference varieties. The aim of this work was to compare thesethree methodologies for assessing some flowering and foliage characteristics of rosebushes. Six plantsfrom 10 rose varieties identified by UPOV as reference varieties were cultivated for two years in a green-house and outdoors in Angers, France. They were measured and photographed weekly during flowering.Photographs of the plants in full bloom were submitted to a panel of judges for sensory assessment.The results of the three assessment methodologies were compared. Sensory and morphometric mea-surements were highly correlated and sensory measurements confirmed UPOV scales, whereas somemorphometric measures diverged slightly from UPOV scales. We discuss the advantages, disadvantagesand complementarity of these three methodologies.

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