Linda Hutchinson-Jafar, Business Writer

Scientists at the University of the West Indies (UWI) have developed a disease-resistant strain of anthurium, sparking hope for a revival of an export market for the ornamental flower.

A new Caribbean Anthurium Development Task Force (CADT) has also been created to rejuvenate the sector, which has been in decline for two decades.

Additionally, the research group at the UWI St. Augustine campus in Trinidad and Tobago has developed protocols for the rapid multiplication of anthurium varieties through tissue culture and has established a laboratory at the university to support the industry and reduce the cost of planting material to growers.

Over the past decade, UWI and Kairi Blooms Limited, the major anthurium grower in Trinidad have been collaborating on anthurium research to develop a more hardy flower that could fight off bacterial infections.

"From the Caribbean workshop we had on anthurium, we have seen a tremendous interest from local and regional farmers," said Dr. Path Umaharan, senior lecturer in Life Sciences, deputy dean of Enterprise Development and Outreach in the Faculty of Science and Agriculture.

Regionally, anthuriums are grown largely in Trinidad and Jamaica. To some extent, Dominica, Barbados, St. Vincent, Dominican Republic and Suriname have small industries; while St. Kitts/Nevis, Antigua and Guyana are showing interest in growing the flower.

Umaharan says the new disease-resistant varieties of anthurium have brought great hope to farmers in the Caribbean.

Increasing demand

Noting that there is an increasing demand for tropical ornamentals in general, he said anthurium was second only to orchid as the most popular tropical ornamentals grown and exported.

The scientist estimates the annual worth of the North American ornamental industry at around US$4 billion.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Caribbean had a flourishing ornamental industry, producing over 10 million cut-flowers per year, and was poised to become the major exporter into North America and a major player globally.

The proximity of the Caribbean to the attractive North American market which is serviced daily by direct flights, the expanding intra-regional market and growing linkages with the regional tourism industry provided comparative advantage to the region.

But the industry slipped into decline due to the emergence of several pests and diseases, mainly bacterial blight and bacterial leaf spot diseases, and the nematode decline caused by the burrowing nematode Radopholus similes.

At that time, the anthurium industry in the region was based on highly susceptible planting material imported from the Netherlands which accentuated the decline.

Other causes were the high cost of imported planting material, and consequent lack of replanting, and the effect of hurricanes.

Jamaica has the oldest and largest anthurium export industry, which was exporting five million cut-flowers during the mid 1980s before disease sapped the flower beds.

Trinidad's production peaked during the mid-1990s, producing around 4.5 million cut-flowers and became the leading exporter, overtaking Jamaica.

At present, the Caribbean produces around 2-3 million cut-flowers.

Globally, Netherlands, the major producer of anthuriums, does 78 million cut-flowers per annum, Mauritius 10 million, Taiwan 10 million, Hawaii 7.5 million, Philippines 4 million, and Thailand 3 million.

Chris Avey, owner of Kairi Blooms said virtually all of the large export oriented farms in Jamaica and Trinidad have gone out of business or, at best, are servicing only their local markets.

Illustrating the importance of the flower on the world market, Avey said anthurium last year was the tenth most traded commodity at the Dutch flower auctions with over 80 million stems sold.

Growing conditions

He notes that one of the constraints to expansion of the industry, even in the productive years, has been the availability of good plant stock tailored to growing conditions in the Caribbean and the cost of planting material.

Since the 1980s, Caribbean production has been based on Dutch anthurium hybrids whose culture is based on heated glass greenhouses, low humidity and relatively low light conditions.

The conversion of cultivation to open shade structures, has run Caribbean growers into a host of problems, the most devastating of which has been the bacterial blight organism known as Xantomonas axonopodis pv. dieffenbachiae.

"The fact that we now have anthurium varieties which have been bred for our own conditions and problems, and are resistant to bacterial blight, can remove a lot of the risk previously associated with growing anthuriums in the Caribbean, " said Avey, chair of the newly established CADT.

The task force's primary objective is to get planting material out to various growers throughout the Caribbean, which its chairman acknowledges is a difficult mandate.

"Although we do have a number of promising varieties on our farm which are resistant to blight and which we are currently field testing, there is still much work to be done in terms of assessing them for productivity, flower size, stem length and general marketability. At this stage, there is very limited tissue culturing services available in the Caribbean, and hardening out facilities for large numbers of anthurium tissue cultured plants are non-existent," said Avey.

"To make matters more confusing, the plant quarantine departments of our various Caribbean governments will not accept the movement of these plants throughout the region so that tissue culturing laboratories will have to be established in every territory along with the necessary hardening facilities. This is not in itself a bad thing as it will add to the creation of other industries centred around the anthurium industry. It just makes the start up that more complicated."

Another problem is the absence of any intellectual property legislation in the Caribbean, with Avey pointing out that having spent years on R&D, there would be no buffer against persons using or reselling the varieties, once they are put in the public domain.

"So basically we need tissue culturing facilities, grow out facilities," he said.

Regional governments

"We need to have the regional governments on board to allow the movement of this material and, in the absence of any intellectual property legislation, we will need contractual obligations from the various labs and growers who want to cultivate these new varieties."

UWI has also been involved in cutting edge research in bioengineering novel anthurium colours and patterns.

The absence of blues, purples and yellows have been limiting factor in anthurium marketing.

"Genetic and molecular biolo-gical investigations have led to the identification and isolation of genes involved in the colour producing biochemical pathway and an understanding of how the pathway is controlled," said Umaharan.

"This along with the develop-ment of a bioengineering method for anthurium, provides great opportunities for manipulating anthurium spathe colour, which in turn will not only bring greater revenues for our anthurium growers but will also provide further competitive advantage to the region," said the scientist.

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