HortiFair 2010, held in Holland, provided an appropriate forum for Indian Flowers & Ornamental Plants Welfare Association (iFlora) and Media Today Group to jointly display Indian floriculture potential to attract more investments and cooperation between Indian companies and growers in foreign countries, especially the Netherlands. iFlora earlier requested the newly appointed Joint Secretary in the Agriculture Ministry & Mission Director, National Horticulture Mission, Sanjeev Chopra, who is responsible for holistic development of Indian horticulture under different programmes and schemes, to lead a delegation and trade visitors from India to the event.
The objective of this participation and visit was to provide firsthand information on latest technological innovations to its members and officials, including Dr Chandramohan, Director, Horticulture, Govt. of Tamil Nadu. The visit included technical training, besides exposure to latest available technologies, new varieties of planting materials, production and post harvest practices and value addition to ornamental produce in world markets. The Indian participation was by flower growers, plant material suppliers, tissue culture companies, government officials and media people. Prominent among them were S Jafar Naqvi, President (iFlora); O P Saini, Principal Secretary, Horticulture, Govt. of Rajasthan; Bharat Bhojane, General Manager, Rise N' Shine Biotech; M B Naqvi, Managing Director, Media Today Group; Sunil Hambir, Manager-Production, Rise N' Shine Floritech; S K Gutgutia, Director, Florance Flora; Sudhir Chadha, a progressive farmer from Uttarakhand; Sanjay Sudan, MD, Sabeer Biotech; and V Saravana Kumar, Sri Vinayak Trading Co. HortiFair is world's most renowned exhibition for Floriculture & Green House Horticulture Sector. With 530 exhibitors from 36 countries, and over 50,000 professional trade visitors from over 50 countries, the International HortiFair is strengthening its position as an innovation platform and is focusing on internationally-oriented horticultural businesses. Horti Fair 2010 was a successful, high caliber trade exhibition which put great emphasis on innovation and knowledge exchange, while actually doing business.

Visit details
Sanjeev Chopra visited Greenhouses & Tissue culture facilities of Preesman-Holland, world leading supplier of floriculture planting material, mainly Roses & Gerbera. Preesman has one of the finest plant breeding facilities in the world. Whereas Preesman uses climate control technologies including heating / misting systems to suit floriculture crops, it was pointed out that India naturally possesses such climate in many states. Most impressive visit of Indian officials was at the production centre of Anthura, which is the world's number one in the field of breeding and propagating Anthuriums, and is ranked amongst the best for Phalaenopsis. Anthurium & orchids require climatic conditions naturally found in many parts of India including the North- East, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. With a growing Indian market, Anthurium & orchids are gaining in popularity among farmers in many parts of India.

Exchange of views
Indian visitors met a number of foreign participants at the Horti Fair and discussed with them the avenues to expand their businesses. While exchanging views, Indian visitors noticed that there has been a major positive change among almost all the exhibitors who were warmly welcoming Indian trade visitors to their stands. The understanding about Indian floriculture / horticulture, the plans of Ministry of Agriculture under NHM and other missions, and schemes created a new awareness among all the international companies to take India as an emerging high quality horticulture destination. Dutch horticulture sector is highly sophisticated and automated employing robotics, Information Technology and high precision equipment to minimize human intervention and increase productivity. An important input that enables this automation is use ofother-than-soil media in production chain. In India's case, it has some advantages like good climatic zones, soil conditions and cheap labour availability to produce good quality flowers and plants round the year without investing in automation.

International mood
Even after facing a major financial setback last year, the mood of international floriculture players was quite positive at the event as compared to the last year, when no one was talking about new expansion or demand increase. The growth of floriculture industry in Holland has become stagnant and the demand of new planting materials are mostly coming from developing markets like India, African countries, and other producing nations. The planting material suppliers, green house makers, green house film and other accessory suppliers and florist product manufacturers are now openly talking about Indian market and, most interestingly, they are now acknowledging India as a sustainable producer of flowers and plants. However, for transfer of technology to Indian market at this stage, pricing of Dutch and European technologies is a major obstacle. On the other hand, the reservation of plant breeders on transfer of newly developed varieties to India is an area where most of the breeders want the assurance from Indian government that the Intellectual Property Right will be implemented effectively to safeguard their interests.

Non-soil media
Sanjeev Chopra and other Indian Government officials had a series of discussions with the companies supplying non-soil media like coco-peat world over through their dedicated marketing network and brand goodwill. Such companies are now active in the Indian sub-continent, especially in Sri Lanka to source their raw materials and mix up with different combination of growing fertilizers as per the crop requirements. A few Dutch companies also acknowledged their sourcing from south Indian states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Some joint ventures are also on ground now. Coir Board of India set up a stall where Indian entrepreneurs displayed coir pith and coco-peat products without any value addition and strong branding.

iFlora members felt that India, despite being a dominant coconut grower, is still a small player in international coir-pith/cocopeat market. Indian suppliers, barring a few of them, are mostly bulk suppliers of raw material. It is felt that Indian companies could launch their branded and value added products with the help of prominent international companies like van der Knaap, (world's most prominent supplier of potting soils & substrates, coco growing slabs, coco-peat, rooting and growing solutions, having factories in Sri Lanka. It has recently started a factory in India) and Jiffy. These companies were interested in increasing their manufacturing presence in India for export marketing. New technologies and equipment suited for tissue culture was also on display. LED based control lighting and automated movement of TC plants were some of products on display.

Research & education
The delegation visited Wageningen University, a famous research centre having within its domain natural, technical and social research. There are always multiple, usually synergetic, approaches and possible solutions to any problem. Wageningen UR therefore fosters the unique interaction between the natural and social sciences. Both sets of disciplines are part of a coherent package of research, education and services. This integrated approach offers additional possibilities for the effective application of expertise in policy or in practice. Wageningen UR maintains open relations with other domains and disciplines. Research agendas are composed in coordination with governments, the business community, special interest groups, and other universities and research institutes in the Netherlands and abroad. As a result, science and education can have an actual impact on society as a whole. Visiting members were shown various research facilities and new technologies developed at the Wageningen University. They include testing methodologies developed for better crops, usage of robotics in agriculture, solar energy in Greenhouses etc. They also visited various international pavilions of competing nations like Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, China, Korea, Germany, UK and Spain to understand world trends and available technologies on offer.

Indian potential
Based on observations and interactions, it is felt that India has vast potential to enter these markets with various products and services. Some of the potential sectors are planting material, seeds, tissue culture plants and cuttings. India can also be a dominant player in coco-pith / coco peat based production support material. A strong scope exists for value added products in this sector. Cut flowers & plants are also highly potential products for European markets. It was observed that the main hindrance to Indian flower & plants exports is volume of supplies and freight, both of them being interconnected. If volumes increase, freight may come down and this aspect gave an indication of joint venture possibilities and contract production between Dutch and Indian growers to explore a win-win situation for both the countries as Dutch horticulture has decades of experience producing high quality flowers and plants although it is facing the problem of high production cost along with labour shortage and high dependence on automation and robotic systems. . On the other hand, the Indian growers now have a sound knowledge of producing flowers in Indian conditions, but the operations are very small and therefore, they are not in a position to deliver large volumes with quality as per international demand. There is vast potential of Technology transfer from Holland to India and product export to India. With adaptation of Dutch technology, Indian horticulture sector may utilize its strengths to the fullest extent. Indo-Dutch cooperation avenues may be explored by inviting relevant government agencies. Floriculture Today along with iFlora is looking forward to its readers in India and in over thirty countries for their suggestions and views on how to explore Indian floriculture through buyer-seller meet, international conference, cooperation, JVs, etc. For more possibilities, all are invited to visit the 6th Int'l Flora Expo 2011 on 7- 9 January where who's who of floriculture industry from over fifteen countries will be participating.