Plant breeders’ rights for the Tainung No. 4–Snow White hybrid of Oncidium orchids are expected to boost the profitability of Taiwan Oncidium producers’ cut-flower export business, the orchid’s developer, the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute, said July 3.
Issued in March, the Japanese rights are the first granted to an ROC government organization for a plant hybrid, director of TARI’s Floriculture Research Center Hsieh Ting-fang said.
Japan is Taiwan’s biggest market for cut-flower Oncidium, or dancing-doll, sprigs. In 2012, it imported 27 million sprigs from Taiwan, earning the latter NT$550 million (US$18.57 million).
In the Japanese cut-flower market, the most popular hybrid is so-called Honey Angel Oncidium, developed and patented in Japan, Hsieh said. Each year Taiwan’s growers pay some NT$50 million in royalties to the Japanese plant right holders.
Taiwan exporters hope that the new Snow White hybrid will win ground against the Honey Angel variety in the Japanese flower market, thus reducing the burden of royalty payments and boosting profitability. Success in that venture depends on whether the Japanese can be persuaded to give up their traditional preference for yellow orchids, Hsieh said.
TARI, a division of the Council of Agriculture, expressed its confidence that the major breakthrough in the color of the flower will translate into a boost in the Japanese cut-flower export market, explaining that pure white is popularly believed to have many auspicious meanings. It symbolizes brightness, perfection, purity of spirit as well as faithfulness in romantic love, the institute pointed out.
Within five months after TARI began authorizing Taiwan flower growers to use the new hybrid in August 2011, over 100 growers had signed licensing agreements with the institute, Hsieh said.
It is expected that exports to Japan of Snow White Oncidium sprigs will be launched at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, when the first mass crop of orchids will come into bloom and be harvested.
Recent years have seen increasing competition in the Japanese cut-flower market for Honey Angel Oncidium from the emerging horticulture industries in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam, where labor is cheaper. Consequently, wholesale prices have dropped from a high of US$3 per sprig several years ago to prices in recent times ranging between US$1 and US$2.
It is anticipated that once the Snow White variety has gained a toehold in the Japanese market, higher wholesale prices can be maintained, as only Taiwan growers are licensed to grow and export the orchids, Hsieh said. (JD)
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