XXIIIrd International Eucarpia symposium, Section Ornamentals ...

BIODIVERSITY AND ORNAMENTAL PLANT
BREEDING IN CHINA
China has a flower growing history of more than 2000 years, but the floricultural industry
just began from the 1985 onwards. Floricultural industry not only contributes to enrich
the people’s spiritual life and to improve the living environment, but also is an important
way to regulate the planting structure and to increase the farmers’ revenue in China.
Cultivars are the basic material of flower production. If only the new cultivars without
Chinese breeder’s rights were produced, it is no real sense to the Chinese floricultural
industry. Although there are more than 5600 species of ornamental plants distributed in
China, and 4400 cultivars bred in China, the commercial cultivated floricultural crops are
mostly foreign species and cultivars. There is plenty of ornamental germplasm in China,
but the often-used breeding materials are cultivars instead of species. Many ornamental
species were bred in China, which mainly concentrated on some traditional famous
flowers. However, pot plants, bedding flowers and woody garden plants are often
involved. About 100 new flower cultivars were released annually, but few of them
were used large-scale in floriculture or landscaping. Presently, the main problems to
flower breeding in China are who should be the breeders and how to protect breeder's
rights.
L5
Hongqiang Yu
Ying Feng
Qinglin Liu
Department of Ornamental
Horticulture and Landscape
Architecture, Agricultural
University, Beijing 100193,
China
liuql@cau.edu.cn
Session Biodiversity 21