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 breeders’ 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 breeders’ rights.

XXIII International Eucarpia Symposium, Section Ornamentals: Colourful Breeding and Genetics

H. Yu, Y. Feng, Q. Liu

germplasm, breeders’ rights, floriculture, ornamentals

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2009.836.4