Garden expo to feature 300 Chinese-developed plant species

Visitors to the Beijing Botanical Garden from April 25 to May 10 will see more than 4,000 flowers from 30 new home-cultivated breeds and 50 wild breeds intended for the 2019 International Horticultural Expo in Beijing.

The newly developed breeds include scarlet sage, marigold, petunias and maidenhair.

About 300 domestically developed plant species will be one of many highlights at the expo, said Shan Hongchen, an official with the expo's coordination bureau, at a news conference at the Beijing Institute of Landscape Architecture last week.

The plant species at the botanical garden were bred from a research and development project on gardening techniques and the cultivation of new breeds. They were specifically developed for the expo, which was listed as a key technology project for 2016-18 by the municipal government in October 2015.

Jointly conducted by multiple universities, research institutions and companies in Beijing, the project aims to find ways to control the florescence of China's traditionally famous flowers, grow wild flowers on a larger scale, develop new breeds and introduce new gardening techniques from other countries.

Under the project, researchers will import 800 new breeds and develop 300 with Chinese intellectual property rights.

Petunias usually lasts two or three months, but at the greenhouse of the institute, a newly cultivated species of petunias called "Jingyan" has been in bloom since December.

Gardening technicians said they have extended the florescence of the species and made it more resistant to frost, so it is better adaptED to the windy, cold climate of northwestern Beijing's Yanqing district, the site of the expo.

"Extending the florescence is no longer an unusual technique," said Shan. "For some bulb plants, such as the tulip, we can even make them bloom whenever we want."

Cong Richen, chief engineer of the Beijing Institute of Landscape Architecture, said urban flowers for display across the country are mostly overseas breeds.

"Domestic companies, research institutions and individuals have actually developed many new breeds over the past decade, but few of them are known to people because of problems in promotion and industrialization."

He said one of their main tasks is to select breeds produced in China and introduce them to international visitors at the horticultural expo.

The organizer of the expo will conduct a test from late April to October, the same duration of time for the expo, by planting approximately 1,000 breeds of flowers in a 3,500-square-meter area in Yanqing to analyze how they grow.

zhangzhao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/13/2016 page17)