The cultivation of gerbera is becoming more and more known, gaining a place, during the last years, as one of the five most cultivated flowering plants in the world. The gerbera is a herbaceous plant, belonging to the Araceae family, appreciated for its exotic flowers, foliage and the high demand for new cultivars and plant material for propagation.
▶ The gerbera is cultivated in different climates and regions in all continents, being the main countries of production Holland, Italy, Germany, France and the United States of America.
▶ Credits: Agrifarming. – [Image of Public Domain]
Gerbera production depends heavily on imports, since the plants are brought almost entirely from Holland, having to be purchased in foreign currency, which greatly increases production costs.
In addition, the transfer to our country can cause damage due to transportation and even death of the plants. This forced importation of plants is due to the great difficulty that the gerbera has in propagating by conventional methods of multiplication (sexual seeds, cuttings, layering or others) as they are inefficient and require a long time to obtain a large number of plants.
For this reason, the method of micropropagation by tissue culture has been implemented, being widely used from meristematic apices and pieces of flower heads that allow obtaining a large number of plants in a laboratory under controlled conditions.
In addition, in vitro propagation allows obtaining homogeneous plants free of pests and diseases, which in turn increases the probability of obtaining higher productivity in accumulated carbon and therefore higher agricultural yields.
NOTE: Reference material.