Australian scientist pioneers sustainable flower industry
Copyright 2001, Environmental News Network
October 08, 2001
The flower shops of the world are soon to see some of the exotic flowers of Australia if Dr. Kate Delaporte has her way. Dr. Delaporte, from Adelaide University's Department of Horticulture, is piloting a project to develop, cultivate and market Australia's native flowers as a sustainable paying crop -- one that requires little water, and is suited to the local environment.
Along much of the River Murray, Australia's largest river, fruit growers are struggling with changing tastes, competing imports, saline soils and river water that has grown more contaminated as it has become less available. Dr. Deleporte's work involves the selection and cultivation of native plants that show promise for floriculture.
Her experiments at the Bookmark Biosphere Reserve near Renmark seek to show how environmental and economic sustainability can be made compatible. There are many native plants to choose from, all with their distinctive appeal, but most with other characteristics that make them less than ideal for the floriculture market.
For example, pearl bluebush is beautiful, but its stem length is short. Correa reflexa is beautiful, too, but its flowers grow along the stem, not at the tips where florists want them. Those problems pose a scientific challenge.
"When selecting a species for development, one of the primary things we look at is where the flower is located on the stem," said Dr. Delaporte. "Most eucalypts that I'm working with have buds that start to appear 12 months before they flower, so when they first appear they are at the end of the stem. Florists require flowers to be at the end of the stem, so here we have a problem."
"You'll go through a population of say 200 plants and you pick out the five with the most terminal flowers," said Dr Delaporte. "You'll take those five plants and propagate from them, and slowly work you way to achieving most of the characters you want," she said. "It's the same with wheat or rose breeding; you've got a list of characters that you are trying to achieve, and you work your way through the entire population to find those characters."
The majority of the Australian market is dominated by European flowers -- roses, carnations, gerberas and so on, and natives are often perceived as being very masculine, said Dr. Delaporte. A growing appreciation of Australian native plants has seen them adopted and grown in many gardens, but making the leap to floriculture is harder. Partly because of their novelty value, native flowers are often regarded more highly overseas than they are in Australia.
Dr. Delaporte was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to travel overseas and evaluate the export potential of native flowers.
"My Churchill Fellowship sent me off to Mediterranean countries because I wanted to investigate what they were doing in terms of Australian native plants; whether they liked them and what the market was," said Dr. Delaporte. "There is a big demand, but to get flowers from Australian to European markets is very difficult," she said.
Dr. Delaporte cites Bookmark as an interesting area because of its isolation from flower markets. Crops grown there will have to be trucked to Sydney or Adelaide for export by air, a process full of logistical difficulties, but she has proposed a better way to market our floriculture expertise.
"Australia might be better positioned to become a plant breeder and developer of new varieties," she said. "It takes a lot less time, space and infrastructure to develop new plant varieties, then propagate them and license them to be grown in other countries where they are very close to their market."
"Because the varieties will be registered with plant breeders' rights, the breeder will automatically get a royalty from every plant sold, and in some cases, even from every bunch of flowers produced," said Dr. Delaporte. "For every plant sold you're getting some money back, instead of having the majority of the risk here in Australia of growing the product and then trying to ship it to Japan or Europe."
The trial ground at Bookmark will eventually grow, as the reserve becomes a self-funding floriculture site. Most of the reserve consists of native vegetation, which incurs few costs. Areas that were cleared long ago will now be used for crops of cultivated native plants that Dr. Delaporte believes have real potential as a new industry.
"Research and development into new floricultural crops will enable the expansion of Australian flora into the world market," she said.
Half the 50 acre Bookmark area will be used for testing and trials, the other half will soon start producing income. The trials there will provide grape and citrus growers with examples of alternative crops that can be grown throughout the Murray Mallee district and elsewhere where growing salinity and declining rainfall mean that dryland farming now requires alternative approaches.