It can take a decade of hard work to bring a new orchid to market.
While the rewards can be significant – the global orchid market is worth hundreds of millions of dollars – the competition to produce the next gorgeous flower is intense.
Which is why, in the race to develop new orchid types, the laboratory is at least as important as the greenhouse.
Centuries of human intervention – selective breeding and propagation – have made the genetic background of many commercial orchids a “disaster”, according to leading Dutch orchid breeding firm Floricultura.
That means it is extremely difficult to predict what characteristics a new plant breed might have.
But by developing genetic markers for particular traits – colour, shape, disease resistance, flowering longevity and so on – Floricultura and its competitors can try to speed up the process of selective breeding.
Instead of waiting for a newly bred plant to flower in three years’ time, the breeders can apply genetic screening techniques on very young plants and discard the ones that don’t match their requirements, right at the start of the process.
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