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The 21st Century - The Orchid Century
Andy Matsui, President
International Commercial Orchid Growers Organization
The 1950s saw one of the most noteworthy developments in the cultivation of potted plants: the creation of a system for raising potted chrysanthemums by Yoder Brothers. Thanks to the company’s improvements in the plant breeding, as well as the mass-marketing of disease-free cuttings, the potted mum quickly became the darling of the potted plant industry worldwide. To this day, production of potted chrysanthemums continues.
The 1970s brought improvements in another major potted plant – the poinsettia. These developments were spearheaded by the Paul Ecke Ranch, which was also instrumental in establishing a supply of cuttings for poinsettia cultivation. For nearly twenty years, the poinsettia has claimed the top spot as the potted plant used most notably for Christmas decorations.
Today, despite the continued popularity of the potted chrysanthemum and potted poinsettia, these varieties have clearly passed their heyday. The global potted plant industry is now awaiting the appearance of a new prince of flowers.
The potted orchid is the prime candidate to become the new darling of the potted plant industry. Around 1990, commercial orchid production gained significant momentum. This development was made possible by disease-free cultivation in flasks, the commercial viability of growing methods using Hark Orchideen and Floricultura Orchidaceae’s meristem cultural system developed in Europe, and the creation of a supply system for disease-free cloned young plants. Capitalizing on this progress, Floricultura established a high-tech mass-production system, gathering orchid varieties from all over the world, while at the same time pursuing breeding improvements. Launching mass-production cultivation of medium-sized plants, it made orchids its most efficient horticultural product.
In Holland, production has continued to increase at an annual rate of 10% to 30% for the past several years, and despite a rise in the unit price, the number of pots produced in Europe this year, including blooms for cut-flower use, is at the point of exceeding fifty million. Floricultura is now supplying seedlings to the world’s major orchid cultivating countries.
Despite such advances in Holland, the industry requires emerging leadership to overcome fundamental problems that threaten continued progress in worldwide commercial orchid production.
For example, the commercial orchid industry in countries outside of Holland does not have comparable leaders to bring rationality to domestic production. In Japan, after finding success with cymbidium, Japanese producers began mass production of Phalaenopsis orchids via a relay system with Taiwan and other countries. However, no industry leaders comparable to those in Holland have emerged from within Japan’s commercial orchid producers. As a result, production remains haphazard, and the market is in chaos, a sad state of affairs for the horticultural industry worldwide.
Significant production threats are evident in other Asian countries. Taiwan – home to the wild moth orchid, as well as this plant’s most important country in terms of cultivar improvement – and China and Thailand, which are following in Taiwan’s footsteps in production of orchid cuttings, are eyeing both North and South America, as well as Europe, as potential new markets. Unfortunately, serious problems loom in the form of haphazard production of orchid plants and viral infections. In particular, the virus problem in these countries has grown to the point that it cannot be solved unless the entire orchid industry joins forces to launch an eradication movement.
In addition to better organizing commercial orchid production within countries and regions throughout the world, there are other serious challenges the industry must work together in a coordinated fashion.
Orchids are renowned among horticultural products for their many varieties. Going forward, breeders will develop new hybrids through interspecies hybridization, as well as cultivars with shorter cultivation periods at lower temperatures. But, in order to avoid chaos, breeders throughout the world must work together to reorganize the existing hybrids on the market. Equally important to the future development of the orchid industry will be regulation of plant patents held independently by various countries throughout the world, along with creation of universal policies protecting the rights of breeders.
With only a short history of commercial production, precise orchid cultivation techniques remain relatively undeveloped, including the control of diseases and pests. Research in these areas must be carried out systematically, and we must see to it that the resulting new technologies spread throughout the industry in an orderly, coordinated manner.
We must also face the issue of dwindling resources. Supplies of bark and sphagnum moss, which have served as the basic orchid growing media for many years, have become more limited worldwide. We must now hasten the discovery and/or development of alternate materials for use in orchid cultivation.
Finally, for the commercial orchid industry to sustain rapid growth, we must contend not only with challenges to cultivation but also with concerns such as more efficient marketing, distribution, ethylene gas control measures, merchandise management, and simplification of CITES and plant quarantine procedures. Although we generally acknowledge awareness of these issues, our industry continues to march in place instead of moving forward to solve these problems
In 2004, at the 8th Asian Pacific Orchid Conference, I proposed to you the creation of a new global orchid organization, with the goal of meeting these challenges during an age of highly developed transport and telecommunications systems. I hoped to see greater cooperation among all the stakeholders -- breeders, plant vendors, institutions of research and technology development, allied suppliers, distributors, and regulatory agencies -- centering on the orchid cultivators themselves.
Happily, thanks to the efforts of a committee set up by Dr. Yin-Tung Wang, at the 2007 Taiwan International Orchid Exhibition in March of this year, over seventy entities involved in the orchid industry came together to establish the International Commercial Orchid Growers Organization (ICOGO). I am honored to serve as its first president.
If this new entity, ICOGO, can move forward energetically, powered by cooperation among all concerned, I am confident that we can make the 21st century the “Era of Orchids” for the global potted plant industry, and assure a leadership role for the orchid within the world’s floriculture business for many years to come.
Under the banner “The 21st Century - The Orchid Century ” I pledge to devote my fullest efforts to this task to the best of my ability.
I hope that all of you will lend your enthusiastic support to these endeavors.
August 2007
Salinas, California
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