MORE R&D vital to increase

Floriculture exports:

by Chandani JAYATILLEKE

The growth of Sri Lanka’s commercial floriculture industry is constrained by the absence of proper Research and Development (R&D) and easy access to technologies on breeding and post harvest management, industry, experts said.

The potential of the industry as a foreign exchange earner is yet to be tapped. “We need to set up a national policy and strategy for the industry, setting up a body dedicated to develop the industry such as the Flower Council in Kenya,” President, Floriculture Produce Exporters’ Association, Ruwan Rajapakse told the Annual General Meeting of the Association on Wednesday.

For some reason, agriculture graduates are not joining the industry although it offers lucrative job opportunities. “This is a huge setback for the industry; without having the proper technology, research and joint cooperation, the industry cannot expect any further growth,” he said.

He emphasised the need to analyse the current status of the floriculture industry in Sri Lanka to identify the problems and find solutions. Sri Lanka has maintained its position as a quality supplier of floriculture products. “Our issue is that we are not a breeding destination. We have the potential but we need technology.”

Among Sri Lanka’s floriculture products, are decorative foliage, rooted and unrooted young plants and indoor plants, cut flowers, landscaping plants, tissue culture plants and aqua plants. Gandapana and Minimal are two popular flowering plants around the world today thanks to the technology developed by a foreign country,

Sri Lanka earned USD 13.9 million by exporting floriculture products in 2015, down from USD 14.86 million in 2014. Sri Lanka’s main markets include Japan, US, the Netherlands, France and Australia.

Dutch support

The Netherlands is the largest global supplier of flowers and flower products in the world with a market share of 52%.

The keynote speaker, the Deputy Head of Mission of the Embassy of Netherlands, Lianne Houban said her country’s success can be attributed to three main factors.

“We are successful because we invest heavily in innovation and R&D. The Netherlands produces 65% of the 1,800 new plants which are produced around the globe.

“This gives us a huge advantage. The second reason is our facility management efficiency – which is a key in the export and import sector. The third reason is the strong cooperation between the government, research and other educational institutions.

This cooperation benefits each other constantly, giving us the opportunity to produce a large number of high quality flowers, a variety of plants and launch new partnerships overseas such as in Kenya,” said Houban.

She added that Sri Lanka should enhance the industry, by adopting similar policies, preferably with Dutch technology. “We support the agriculture sector in Sri Lanka and hope to support the industry further. We may be the only embassy in Sri Lanka to have an agricultural policy officer – who has already done a lot of research in related fields for the benefit of Sri Lankans,” she said.

State Minister of International Trade, Sujeewa Senasinghe said the Export Development Board has identified floriculture as a prominent export sector.

“Although the country’s export earnings have plummeted over the past few years, we are hopeful that more global markets and buyers could be found for our exports over the next few years following the strong diplomatic relations the government has now established.

He said his ministry would explore areas to bring in innovations and new technologies with the support of foreign partners in the near future and hoped that the island will attract more foreign exchange through this ‘beautiful’ industry.