Introduction and Development of New Ornamental Crops

Market saturation with traditional plants has forced increasing interest in novelties, and more and more countries are looking to their native flora as a source as potential ornamental crops. A major reason for genetic resource conservation is to ensure that the diversity will be available for future breeding programs and sustainable production, in order to enable the industry to react quickly and efficiently. Countries and regions where intensive work is being undertaken include Israel (Halevy, 2000), Australia (Plummer et al., 2000), South Africa, and Northeast Asia (Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan) (Okhawa, 2000). A special Ornamental Plant Germplasm Center was created in the U.S.A. in conjunction with the U.S.D.A. National Plant Germplasm System and Ohio State University (Tay, 2003). At the same time, in most countries, lack of knowledge about indigenous plant genetic resources still hinders the development of new crops (FAO, 1998).
The utilization of ornamental species from warm-climate regions could be greatly expanded by increasing plant evaluation and effective collaboration among researchers, extension specialists and growers. Obviously, questions concerning the transfer of knowledge, legal issues, and the sharing of benefits must be dealt with in accordance to the Convention of Biological Diversity (http://www.biodiv.org/convention /articles.asp, 1992) and taken into consideration in relation to each case of new crop development (Coetzee, 2002)

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