Ornamental Plant Breeding

TLDR

The ornamental plant market is valued at approximately 107 billion dollars annually, underscoring its significant economic and social impact. To meet global consumer demand, a structured breeding program that aligns with market needs is essential. Breeding success relies on pre‑breeding, conventional methods, and biotechnological techniques such as tissue culture, protoplast fusion, and genetic engineering to produce superior genotypes. Literature demonstrates that genetic breeding effectively yields commercially valuable ornamental cultivars that compete with existing market options.

Abstract

World’s ornamental plant market, including domestic market of several countries and its exports, is currently evaluated in 107 billion dollars yearly. Such estimate highlights the importance of the sector in the economy of the countries, as well as its important social role, as it represents one of the main activities, which contributes to income and employment. Therefore a well-structured plant breeding program, which is connected with consumers’ demands, is required in order to fulfill these market needs globally. Activities related to pre-breeding, conventional breeding, and breeding by biotechnological techniques constitute the basis for the successful development of new ornamental plant cultivars. Techniques that involve tissue culture, protoplast fusion and genetic engineering greatly aid conventional breeding (germplasm introduction, plant selection and hybridization), aiming the obtention of superior genotypes. Therefore it makes evident, in the literature, the successful employment of genetic breeding, since it aims to develop plants with commercial value that are also competitive with the ones available in the market.