2014 CIOPORA Chronicle

Opinion
The importance
of innovative
breeding, not only
for horticulture but
also for the society
at large cannot be
stressed enough.
The importance
of being different
by Jaap N. Kras
Seen from the commercial
viewpoint, the urge to differentiate
yourself and your
products in the marketplace has
grown tremendously. Western
markets are showing market saturation
in ornamentals, so the pressure
to reinvent flower shops and garden
centres increases. Meanwhile,
consumers have lost their taste for
fresh fruits, urging fruit growers to
promote consumption by bringing
new and different varieties onto the
market.
Main message
Over the past decades, we have
learned that there are basically two
methods of selling your product:
being cheaper than your competitor
or being unique. For years, the
pressure of competition forced
growers to produce larger volumes
for a cheaper price with a major
focus on efficient production.
As a result, breeders launched
new varieties that featured a faster
growth and higher yield per m².
There are many examples, but a
quick look at the current range of
available tulips, Gerberas, roses,
Chrysanthemums and even
Phalaenopsis is sufficient to
demonstrate this tendency.
Higher productivity is the
ornamental breeding industry’s
motto. But the truth is that while
increasing labour costs will force
the industry to further automatise,
growers in general are no longer
able to produce more and at lower
costs. Being different is the main
message for the future.
Reviving crops
When the life cycle of a product
comes to an end, new products
have to be introduced, whether it is
new challenging crops or improved
varieties of already existing cash
crops. The success of Hydrangea,
Ranunculus and Phaleanopsis
over the last decades is a perfect
Rose breeders perfectly understand the importance of being different
(Photo credits: Roses Forever).
example of how growers successfully
introduced new crops, how
varieties constantly change and
revive the existing rose, tulip, lily
and Chrysanthemum industries.
Currently, we are blessed with an
enormously wide range of products
with plenty of new crops making
us stand out among our competitors.
To stimulate professional
breeding, the breeders should be
offered a reasonable return on
investment. Individual breeders
are often family-based, small to
medium sized companies with little
influence on governmental and
institutional decisions from the EU
or the UPOV. So the cooperation of
breeders in industry associations is
necessary to provide guarantees for
the future.
CIOPORA in search
of answers
At the beginning of April, I had the
honour to visit CIOPORA’s Annual
General Meeting in The Hague,
the Netherlands. Two topics on
the agenda of the CIOPORA IP
Workshops caught my attention:
EDV and Minimum distances.
The questions that arose during
the course of the discussion on
these topics included: When do we
have a new variety and does this
new variety fall under the scope of
protection of an existing variety?
In my opinion, both subjects are
two different angles of the same
problem that should have been
solved when the UPOV convention
on Plant Breeders’ Right was signed
in 1961. A third subject on the
agenda was the ‘exhaustion’, since
in certain situations exhaustion can
be a threat for the breeder.
Wider distance
between varieties
A wider distance between varieties
is the general answer. Often people
give the example of a grower who
accidentally has found a mutant in
his flower bed or greenhouse. The
saying goes as follows: a grower purchases
starting material of a protected
variety, pays the royalty fee and
drives home to grow flowers. After
planting he comes across a mutant.
He can now apply for a new PBR
10 www.FloraCulture.eu | CIOPORA Chronicle June 2014