Research
and Development Strategy
Bulbs & Outdoor Flowers
The Bulbs & Outdoor Flowers sector is the smallest
of the 7 HDC sector Panels contributing approximately
3% of the annual HDC income. This sector encompasses
narcissus bulb and flower production, forced bulbs, other
bulb crops such as tulips and gladioli, and outdoor cut
flowers and foliage.
The future challenges provided by the bulbs and outdoor
flowers sectors is refocusing R&D in new and exciting
directions, providing opportunities for a broad range
of researchers not just restricted to the UK.
HDC funded research and development work in the past
has focused very much on crop protection issues and on
variety trialling of narcissus. Narcissus growers are
still looking for robust sustainable management packages
for a wide number of crop protection and agronomic challenges
whilst considering investigating marketing strategies
to maintain and increase their market share. Production
costs in this sector highlighted that labour can account
for up to 60% of total production costs, with the next
largest cost area being plant material, fertilisers,
etc, at 20%.
The target of reducing labour costs per unit of production
is a challenge and involves business management, capital
investment, staff training, and in some instances, legislative
issues. It will not be easy to deliver this target but
concerted action is needed amongst various industry associations
in order to make progress. A recent initiative is the
production of a training picking video to ensure industry
best practice and increased efficiencies. There is some
overlap between the labour issues in outdoor flower production
and other field grown crops in the soft fruit and vegetables
sectors. A combined initiative with other sector Panels
is likely to deliver further projects for the Bulbs and
Flowers sector.
The increasing volumes of flowers sales by the multiple
retailers and the recent adoption of accreditation and
environmental schemes within the ornamentals industry
worldwide, requires that growers produce and supply consistent
quality bulbs and flowers that will achieve customer
satisfaction. Breeders and packers are continually striving
for new and better cultivars in order to interest customers
and improve shelf-life. However, the focus of flower
breeding programmes is rarely for UK production conditions
and hence basic agronomic information is often lacking,
particularly for those flower crops that could be produced
in the UK in the summer months.
Recent intensive consultation with the cut flower industry
has highlighted a number of new and challenging areas
of research. These include market research into understanding
customer trends, finding new treatments to prolong shelf
life without the use of ‘chemical pesticides’ and
the never ending endeavour to reduce the high costs of
labour.
As government continues to bring in new legislation
that has implications for the horticultural sector, the
bulb and outdoor flower industries are continually searching
for innovative technologies that will enable them to
remain economically viable and environmentally friendly
for the decades to come.
Lindrea Latham
Technical Manager
Download R&D Strategy Tables (PDF - 85K)
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