Defining Horticulture

Horticultural Products

Horticultural products include all products, raw or processed, that arise from the horticultural industry. This broadly inclusive definition is appropriate and even necessary in a time when traceability from the producer to the ultimate consumer is of growing interest to government and industry. Products from horticultural industry that go to market still respiring (fresh produce) are clearly horticultural products. When juiced, sliced or pureed, fermented, frozen, preserved, canned, dried, irradiated, or used in an ornamental construct (such as a flower arrangement) they remain, in our view, a horticultural product. However, when a horticultural product becomes a major ingredient of another manufactured item the categorization becomes more complex. Thus, when apples are used to make apple pie or yogurt is fortified with fruit, the product can be considered both a horticultural product and a bakery or dairy product.

Horticultural Crops

In applying this definition of a horticultural product, it is necessary to know what crops are appropriately assigned to the horticultural industry. It is generally accepted by researchers, educators and industry practitioners that horticultural crops include:

• tree, bush and perennial vine fruits;
• perennial bush and tree nuts;
• vegetables (roots, tubers, shoots, stems, leaves, fruits and flowers of edible and mainly annual plants);
• aromatic and medicinal foliage, seeds and roots (from annual or perennial plants);
• cut flowers, potted ornamental plants, and bedding plants (involving both annual or perennial plants); and
• trees, shrubs, turf and ornamental grasses propagated and produced in nurseries for use in landscaping or for establishing fruit orchards or other crop production units.

Sometimes a horticultural plant may be used to produce another crop. Honey is a good example and is often considered to be a horticultural product. Raw silk is produced by silkworms feeding on mulberry trees (which also produce an edible fruit) but silk is not considered to be a horticultural crop. Cultivated or gathered mushrooms (edible fungi) are also considered to be horticultural crops.

Some Horticultural Industry Descriptors

Like other divisions of agriculture, horticulture is practised across cool temperate to tropical latitudes and over a wide range of elevations and climatic conditions. However, it differs from agronomy in a number of significant ways – although it must be recognized that some crops can be classed as both depending on the scale of production. For example, there are soybean cultivars suitable for fresh consumption which are grown intensively in market gardens in many Asian countries, but soybeans are also grown extensively as a field crop for oil and animal feed production. Sweet corn grown for the fresh market, canning or freezing can be considered horticulture, but maize grown for grain or forage is agronomic.

Horticultural cropping systems are intensive in terms of investment, labour requirements and other inputs and are often (but not always) confined to smaller parcels of high quality land. Protected cultivation (e.g., glasshouses or plastic tunnels) and irrigation are common. Accordingly, the products of a horticultural enterprise usually have a much higher per unit value than crops grown in less intensive systems. Regardless of scale or intensity, horticulture is not the production of pasture or forage for feeding livestock.

Growing grains, pulses or oilseeds for feed, food or industrial use is not horticulture nor are systems growing plants for fibre production (e.g., cotton, flax and hemp). Similarly, forests or plantations growing trees for industrial products (e.g., for fibre or building materials, latex production for rubber manufacture, oil production for food or industry – like oil palms) are not horticulture.

Horticultural Science

Horticultural science addresses the needs and issues of the horticultural industry. However, it includes much more. We often use terms like environmental horticulture or urban horticulture to capture a second realm that more specifically addresses environmental enhancement issues. Within this realm we train our graduates to perform a service rather than to deliver a consumable product. Environmental or urban horticulture supports activities like home gardening, landscaping, arboriculture, and interior decorating with plants.

These activities are often used in a human health construct which is described as horticultural therapy. Urban parks, gardens and street trees are considered essential in creating a good living environment in communities around the world and are maintained by the Horticulture Department of many cities and towns. Thus, horticulture has an important “quality of life” component.

Another realm of horticultural science with great environmental and commercial importance involves the collection, preservation, organization, characterization and improvement of horticultural plant genetic resources. Plant exploration, botanical gardens and arboreta, naming authorities, gene banks, genomics and plant breeding are the domain of many people employed in horticulture.

In addition, there is a value chain component. In transporting and distributing fresh fruit, vegetables, cut flowers and plants, as the products are highly perishable and easily damaged, there is a need to maintain product quality to reduce wastage.

Fresh fruit and vegetables are regarded as being essential items in a balanced diet, providing many of the essential vitamins and minerals that are necessary for a healthy and productive life. Hence, there is also a nutritional component.

Finally, if primary producers are to be sustainable, they must also be profitable. Managing horticultural enterprises is a complex task that requires managers to optimise plant growth through the selection of appropriate varieties, often managing and manipulating the growing environment, applying resources such as water, fertilisers and chemicals at the appropriate rates commensurate with the crops needs, managing labour and managing dynamic markets.

Horticultural science exists to build and maintain human knowledge, skills and biological resources in support of a sustainable horticulture industry. Horticultural scientists explore and explain the many contributions plants make to a healthy environment. Hence, horticultural science must be deemed an essential life science.