2003 OSU/OFA POINSETTIA TRIAL RESULTS Consumer Evaluations By Monica Kmetz-Gonzalez (OSU), Claudio Pasian (OSU), and Steve Carver (OFA) This season's OFA Grower Extension Committee/The Ohio State University, Department of Horticulture and Crop Science consumer poinsettia cultivar trial was conducted on December 4, 5, and 6, 2003. The continuing goal of this exercise is to expose growers to the newest cultivars available from the major poinsettia breeders/suppliers, and to give them a glimpse of consumer reaction to them. There were several new cultivars in this year's trial. As in past years trials, we retired a number of cultivars that have been available to the industry for one or two years, leaving some of the old as benchmarks. The rooted poinsettia cuttings were generously supplied by: Dummen USA/Plant Peddler, Cresco, Iowa Paul Ecke Ranch, Encinitas, California Fischer USA, Boulder, Colorado Oglevee Ltd., Connellsville, Pennsylvania Selecta/HMA, North Kingsville, Ohio. The cuttings were grown at four wholesale/retail growers around Ohio: Barco & Sons Inc., Medina Bostdorff Greenhouse, Bowling Green A.J. Rahn Greenhouses, Cincinnati Dill's Greenhouse, Columbus The design of this year's trial was very similar to last year's, so we'll save the details for the end of this article. This year's results: Red continues to rule. This year, 9 of the top 10 rated cultivars were red. They include: an experimental with no name ('1-99'), 'Merlot', Orion Red', experimental '54-99', experimental 1055, 'Chianti', 'Euro Star', 'Spotlight Dark Red', 'Infinity', and Silent Night'. Experimental '54-99' was the other non-red receiving top ratings. As in the last two previous years, we asked all evaluators to select not more than three that they would buy now if the price were right. We call this "preferences". As in previous years, a jingle type poinsettia (experimental '54-99') was the top selection by the consumers. With a few exceptions, men seemed to be a little more critical than women.The difference was very small and probably not statistically significant. Like last year, young consumers were generally more critical in their opinion of most than older consumers, especially the "over 65" group. A notable exception to this observation was for cultivars that exhibit a nontraditional bract shape. For example, 'Snowbery Punch', 'Carrousel', '101-1' Marble, and others. It is interesting to note that though novelties and non-red cultivars, as a whole, faired more poorly in the general ratings than red's, they tended to do better in the Preference list. For example 'White Christmas' and 'New Cortez Fire' were slightly above the middle of the list of ratings but were 5th and 6th in the preference list. What does all this mean? It suggests that though perhaps not as universally popular as the red's, new novelties and non-red's have a definite niche. One that perhaps growers, especially retail growers, can take advantage of as they distinguish themselves from large discount retailers in both pricing and availability. As mentioned earlier, the design of the consumer evaluation is similar to that used for the last three years. It was held in conjunction with the poinsettia sale run by the horticulture honorary society Pi-Alpha-Xi (PAX) Dec 4 - 6. PAX customers typically are OSU faculty, staff, students, and university "friends". Perhaps 90 to 95 percent of those that walk through the door leave with at least one poinsettia. It was 234 of those poinsettia buyers that we asked to participate in our cultivar evaluation. Growers should consider that this sample of consumers does not represent a true representative sample of Columbus or Ohio population and as such could not b e considered a scientific survey. We still believe that it gives an idea of the preferences of a segment of our society: middle class, well educated OSU employees. This year we had a total of 47 cultivars including some older standards for comparison. One plant from each of the four growers listed above was sent to the Ohio State University, Howlett Hall greenhouses, 1 to 5 days prior to the evaluation. They were grown under similar conditions. All plants of each cultivar were grouped together (no replication), with cultivars being numbered and randomized on the bench. No attempt was made to group cultivars by color or type. Because plants were not sleeved or boxed for more than a day, their handling more closely approximates that typical in a retail greenhouse than a box store. We asked reviewers to walk through the greenhouse and rate each cultivar, based on its overall appeal on a 5-point scale with "5" being the top score. As in the last three previous years, we asked all evaluators to select not more than three that they would buy now if the price were right (Preference in the Tables). It is our hope that growers can integrate these results with their own experiences and results from other trials as they plan for next year's poinsettia season. ~Take a peek of our trials: (Photo 1) , (Photo 2) , (Photo 3)  ,