Horticultural Science and Technology 원예과학기술지 ISSN:1226-8763(Print) 2465-8588(Online)

The foliage of variegated Solomon’s seal is excellent in cut flower arrangements. However, it has a restricted marketing period because the harvesting is limited in spring and summer. The increased interest requires the year-round production, thus techniques for dormancy breaking and forcing without low temperature treatment is needed. Therefore, experiments were conducted to determine whether gibberellic acid (GA) could break dormancy in variegated Solomon’s seal. The sprouting of dormant bud did not occur throughout the experiment when GA3 400 mg･L^-1 was applied to dormant rhizomes as a soil drench. However, when plants were treated with a GA drench after scratch with razor blade or were given direct injection of GA, percent sprouting was increased up to 100 or 83.3%, respectively. However, because treatments with razor or syringe may damage internal organs, we tested another method, scarifying the rhizomes with sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl). Rhizome scarification with 4% NaOCl for 6 or 24 hours followed by drench of GA3 400 mg･L^-1 increased the dormancy breaking percentage to 70 or 86.7%, respectively. Moreover, scarified and GA-treated rhizomes produced more leaves than untreated or GA-soil drenched plants in the glasshouse. These results showed the possibility of year-round production of variegated Solomon’s seal foliage with rhizome scarification and GA treatments.