Floriculture (from ) is the study of the efficient production of the plants that produce showy, colourful and even edible flowers and foliage. It is a commercially successful branch of horticulture and agriculture found throughout the world. Efficient production practices have been developed over the years, for the hundreds of plant taxa used in the floral industry, increasing the overall knowledge of whole plant biology. Plant breeding and selection have produced tens of thousands of new genotypes for human use.
Overview Flowers are an important part of human society that are often used at times of joy and sadness, and as a part of everyday life. Flowers and plants may be indoors in a sunny window, as part of the landscape in the front yard or on the patio or deck in the back yard. People have been studying flowers and plants and their interaction with humans and how to produce these flowers and plants so all humans can enjoy them. Floriculture scientists throughout the world to do this work.
Floriculture crops include cut flowers and cut cultivated greens, bedding plants (garden flowers or annuals, and perennials, houseplants (foliage plants and flowering potted plants). These plants are produced in ground beds, flower fields or in containers in a greenhouse. Protected cultivation is often used because these plants have a high value to humans.
Flower crops are grown in simple to highly sophisticated ways. These crops can be grown in soil in farm fields or in field soil in inexpensive high tunnel greenhouses.H. Chris Wien. Floral Crop Production in High Tunnels. HortTechnology Jan 2009 19(1): 56-60 For years, flowers were grown, seasonally for the specific crop, close to the market in Europe, North America and Asia. However, many crops of the floral industry have moved to a specific climate, typically in the mountains of South America, Africa and China, so certain plants can be grown year aroundVan Rijswick C. World floriculture map 2015. Gearing Up for Stronger Competition, Rabobank Industry Note. 2015 Jan(475). where hand labor is available.
Protected horticulture (greenhouses) has developed simultaneously with the continued changes in the flower crops and markets. Floriculture is a major component of controlled-environment agriculture (CEA). Floriculture crops have a high value to humans, so the cost of an expensive production system - greenhouses,Chris Beytes (Editor). 2021. Ball RedBook: Greenhouse Structures, Equipment, and Technology 19th Edition. Ball Publishing. automated environmental control, automated irrigation and fertilization, robotic seed, transplant and container handling, supplemental photosynthetic lighting - is necessary to produce these plants efficiently for the world-wide markets. Some are irrigated manually, but most are irrigated with drip irrigation, boom irrigation or flood floors. Hydroponics can be used for many cut flower crops.
Floriculture value 2022 The global Floriculture market size is estimated to be worth US$50.04 billion in 2022 and is forecast to be a readjusted size of US$58.03 billion by 2028 with a compound annual growth rate of 2.5% during the review period.Floriculture Market 2022. Size, Share, Growth. Trends, Recent Developments, Company Profiles, Key Suppliers, Production Capacity, Revenue & Gross Margin, Market Drivers, Opportunities, Challenges and Forecast 2028. Market Reports World. April 04, 2022 07:48 ET.
The total wholesale value of sales across all U.S. floriculture crops totaled US$6.69 billion in 2022 from 8,951 floriculture producers with a production area of 833 million square feet.2022 Commercial Floriculture Survey NASS's Quick Stats. National Agricultural Statistics Service. United States Department of Agriculture. 05/31/2023.
Floriculture advancements Plant enthusiasts and growers learned significant details about growing certain plants over the years. Chrysanthemums have been cultivated in China for over 3000 years, so growers knew about the plant and how to grow it. Floriculture scientists have simply continued this trend to control the plant's environment to control flowering for the significant dates when humans want flowers for celebrations and gatherings.
Photoperiodism Chrysanthemum was one of the plants used in experiments that led to the definitions of photoperiod and photoperiodism.Garner, W. and H. Allard. 1920. Effect of the relative length of day and night and other factors of the environment on growth and reproduction in plants. Jour. Agr. Res. 18:553-606. Yet, it's likely that Chinese, Korean and Japanese plantsmen had a good understanding based on their years of experience. The occurrence of this physiological response and the reasons for it have been the subject of many experiments at universities and in industry.Withrow, R.B. and H.M. Benedict. 1936. Photoperiodic responses of certain greenhouse annuals as influenced by intensity and wavelength of artificial light used to lengthen the daylight period. Plant Physiol. 11:225-249.Popham, R. A., & Chan, A. P. (1952). Origin and development of the receptacle of Chrysanthemum morifolium. American Journal of Botany, 329-339.Higuchi, Y., Sumitomo, K., Oda, A., Shimizu, H., & Hisamatsu, T. (2012). Day light quality affects the night-break response in the short-day plant chrysanthemum, suggesting differential phytochrome-mediated regulation of flowering. Journal of plant physiology, 169(18), 1789-1796.Lee, B. J., Won, M. K., Choi, W. C., Yang, E. S., Lee, J. S., & Atherton, J. G. (2004). Floral development of chrysanthemum influenced by photoperiod. HORTICULTURE ENVIRONMENT and BIOTECHNOLOGY, 45(3), 149-153. Poinsettias are another short day plant with importance to flower growers.Parker, M. W., Borthwick, H. A., & Rappleye, L. E. (1950). Photoperiodic responses of poinsettia. Florists' Exchange, 115(20), 11-50. These and additional experiments and experience have shown that temperature has an impact on the photoperiodic response.Alden, M., & Faust, J. E. (2021). Unravelling the role of temperature and photoperiod on poinsettia heat delay. HortScience, 56(9), 1097-1103. Many cut flower and bedding plant species respond to long day or short day treatments for faster flowering.Harshitha, H. M., Chandrashekar, S. Y., & Harishkumar, K. (2021). Photoperiod manipulation in flowers and ornamentals for perpetual flowering. Pharma Innov J, 10(6), 127-134.Erwin, J. E., & Warner, R. M. (2000, November). Determination of photoperiodic response group and effect of supplemental irradiance on flowering of several bedding plant species. In IV International ISHS Symposium on Artificial Lighting 580 (pp. 95-99).Adams, S. R., & Langton, F. A. (2005). Photoperiod and plant growth: a review. The Journal of Horticultural Science and Biotechnology, 80(1), 2-10. The use of lighting treatments to extend the day and black cloth treatments to shorten the day are important additions to floriculture to increase the efficiency of plant production.
Plant tissue culture, micropropagation Plant propagation has always been a part of flower and plant gardening. Plant tissue culture began as a way to save orchid embryos as orchid fanciers bred new cultivars. Most horticulture and many botany programs in the world had scientists working on plant propagation through tissue culture techniques from the 1950s to the 1980s.Thorpe, T. A. (2007). History of plant tissue culture. Molecular biotechnology, 37, 169–180.Gamborg, O. L., Murashige, T., Thorpe, T. A., & Vasil, I. K. (1976). Plant tissue culture media. In vitro, 12(7), 473-478.García-Gonzáles, R., Quiroz, K., Carrasco, B., & Caligari, P. (2010). Plant tissue culture: Current status, opportunities and challenges. International Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources, 37(3), 5-30. These programs expanded the knowledge base on a wide range of taxa and allowed industry to find the connection to commercial production. Plant tissue culture allowed new, unique phenotypes and genotypes to be propagated in large numbers quickly. Many cultivars of foliage plants are available only from tissue culture.Griffith, L. P. (1998). Tropical Foliage Plants: A Grower's Guide. United States: Ball Pub. Uniquely, tissue cultured geraniums were heat treated to allow the identification and removal of many viruses, virus-indexed.Oglevee-O'Donovan, W. (1986). Production of culture virus-indexed geraniums. In Tissue culture as a plant production system for horticultural crops: Conference on Tissue Culture as a Plant Production System for Horticultural Crops, Beltsville, MD, October 20–23, 1985 (pp. 119-123). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. As viruses were removed, many horticultural characteristics of the many cultivars disappeared; this led plant breeders to leave many viruses in breeding lines for future cultivars. Heat treatment of tissue culture of many taxa has since been used to remove bacteria and virus pathogens in various floriculture crops.
Containers and growing media
Containers of various kinds have been used in the culture of plants for a long time. Field soil or garden soil possibly with an addition of organic matter (compost) was placed in the container or pot and a plant was added followed by regular watering. It required experience and a watchful eye to prevent overwatering.
This success was tied to a relatively deep pot, usually 6–10 inches (15–25 cm) deep or larger. Gravity was sufficient to pull or drain water from the soil so an adequate portion of the soil in the pot was well drained and oxygen would be available to the root system. As US greenhouses began to expand the bedding plant business in the 1950s and 1960s, they needed smaller containers for the logistical aspects of plant spacing and shipping. Vacuum formed plastic trays and packs offered the smaller sizes but composted field soil was easy to overwater in the smaller containers. The first step was to add peat moss and perlite to the field soil in a 1:1:1 ratio. The next step was to use other materials, sphagnum moss peat and vermiculite, in a 1:1 ratio, the Cornell peat-lite mix.Sheldrake Jr, R., & Boodley, J. W. (1965, May). Plant growing in lightweight artificial mixes. In Symposium on Vegetable Growing under Glass 4 (pp. 155-157).Boodley, J. W., & Sheldrake, R. (1972). Cornell peat-lite mixes for commercial growing. In the 1970s, more materials were used for growing media by the companies formed to process and distribute growing media to operations across the country. The physical properties of all the products had to be evaluated on a standard basis to make wise choices with economic decisions the operations were making.Bilderback, T. E., & Fonteno, W. C. (1987). Effects of container geometry and media physical properties on air and water volumes in containers. Journal of Environmental Horticulture, 5(4), 180–182.Fonteno, W. C., Cassel, D. K., & Larson, R. A. (1981). Physical Properties of Three Container Media and their Effect on Poinsettia Growth1. Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science, 106(6), 736–741. As plug (young plant) production, mechanization of seed germination and mechanization of transplanting, began in the 1980s more work was necessary to manage the small volume of growing media in plug trays.Di Benedetto, A. H., & Klasman, R. (2004). The effect of plug cell volume on the post-transplant growth for Impatiens walleriana pot plant. European Journal of Horticultural Science, 69(2), 82-86. Research continues of all aspects of growing media and container design.Gallegos, J., Álvaro, J. E., & Urrestarazu, M. (2020). Container Design Affects Shoot and Root Growth of Vegetable Plant. HortScience horts, 55(6), 787-794. Retrieved Jul 22, 2023, from