Abstract:

‘Shakira’，a rose cultivar with strong tolerance to water stress and‘Friendship’, a sensitive rose cultivar to water stress,were screened out from 12 cut rose cultivars which are popular in the current market, according to vase life, bent neck rate, water recovery rate, fresh weight loss and flowers diameter. The two cultivars were used to study the relationship between tolerance to water stress and accumulation of proline. The result showed that with the increasing of water stress, the content of free proline was significantly increased. The accumulation of proline in‘ Shakira’was less than that of ‘Friendship’under the light water stress, but became much higher than that of ‘Friendship’ with the severe water stress. Therefore, the accumulation of proline can be considered as the indicator of tolerance to water stress in the cut roses.

Key words: cut rose, tolerance to water stress, proline