We are delighted to have you here to participate and share your views at the 3rd International Conference entitled 'Heralding New Horticulture Revolution for Investment, Production, Value Addition, Marketing and Exports', organised jointly by iFlora and Media Today group. Thank you all for coming. That many of you travelled long distances serves to remind us all just how important this activity is. It is my honour to welcome on behalf of organisers and participants Shri Sanjeev Chopra, Jt. Secretary & Mission Director - NHM, Ministry of Agriculture, whose valuable guidance was vital for the success of Flora Expo & Horti Expo. Active support from your Ministry has been very important for development of this platform of international repute. I am sure that we all will be benefited greatly by paying thoughtful attention to the Address by Shri Sanjeev Chopra in a short while from now. I also welcome His Excellency Bob Hiensch, Ambassador of The Netherlands, a country that is poised to become natural partner to Indian horticulture sector. While individual Dutch organisations had been participating in our activity ever since very first expo in Bangalore, it is first time The Netherlands Embassy collected them together under its banner as Partner Country. We look forward to stronger trade delegations and cooperation in future events. I extend a cordial welcome to Shri Bijoy Kumar, MD, NHB, for giving immense support to the event. And, my warm welcome to each and every member of the distinguished audience. It is indeed a pleasure to have you all here today. India occupies many top positions in world's fruits & vegetable production charts. Post liberalization many growers are find it challenging market scenario where apples from Australia & China are posing competition to those from Himachal and Jammu & Kashmir; Grapes from California are available along side grapes from Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Understanding market dynamics is key to their profitability and absence of marketing linkages is another important issue. Consumer market prices of horticulture crops hardly reflects the prices that growers receive from the wholesale middlemen. A possible solution to this is creating more linkages among farmers, wholesalers, retailers and bulk buyers. Moreover, market requirements in terms of quality, shelf life, packaging, availability and regularity are changing. In my humble view, the agriculture as culture is getting rather unsustainable and may not survive very long. Agriculture has to become 'AgriBusiness' in order to become profitable. To ensure this evolution of Agriculture into AgriBusiness and of Horticulture into HortiBusiness, exhibitions like Flora Expo & Horti Expo are need of the hour. We are trying to expose the growers to the tools available for increasing productivity, increasing quality & improving marketing linkages and to achieve these objectives, we have on display latest varieties & production technologies, production inputs, post harvest supports & inputs, services. Indeed, there is everything that is required to help the farmers to graduate into Horti- Business enterprises. For floriculture sector, Flora Expo organisers & iFlora organised floriculture conferences in Delhi, Pune and Bangalore and supported many other workshops to ensure grower empowerment through knowledge sharing. To expose Indian growers to globally launched technologies, iFlora has been leading grower delegations to major horticulture events in different parts of the world, including Holland, China, Japan and Dubai. To create marketing linkages, we started Flora Expo series of exhibitions for floriculture industry & trade. Flora Expo provided first ever platform to Indian growers to interact directly with Technology & input suppliers & bulk buyers. The results have been encouraging. I must acknowledge the support of Ministry of Agriculture-- NHM, Technology Mission and NHB, as well as Ministry of Commerce - APEDA that made it possible.

In year 2009, Horti Expo, the first ever conceptually unique activity, was launched with support of Ministry of Agriculture - NHM, APEDA & other government agencies. This year the two activities have been clubbed together to ensure cross-sector knowledge exchange, to enable popularization of latest floriculture technologies in general horticulture, and to encourage development of perishable produce handling enterprises. This program has been promoted in some of the world's biggest exhibitions in 12 countries where coordinators made personal visits. Using online promotion tools, the online message of this activity reached a total of around 4 crore 30 lakh people worldwide, out of which about 1 lakh 12 thousand people visited the network websites to know more about it. Here in this hall, we have horticulture wealth of 24 States, technology & services of over 150 companies from India & abroad. Delegates from almost entire India and neighbouring countries, indeed from over 15 countries are here. This 3rd International Conference on "Heralding New Horticulture Revolution for Investment, Production, Value Addition, Marketing and Exports" is a discussion forum to ensure knowledge flow and get fruitful outcome of entire exercise. I welcome distinguished speakers & expert panelists of the all technical sessions. And, I welcome all the delegates whose presence and participation is vital to meet the objectives of this conference. Before I finish, I would like to welcome you once again on behalf of iFlora, the Media Today group and all exhibitors.