The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday said a new orchid variety cultivated by the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute has been granted a patent in Japan and will be ready for export by the end of the year.
The institute said Japan is the main export market for Taiwan’s Oncidium orchids, with up to 27 million sprays exported to the country last year for NT$550 million (US$18 million) in revenue.
Tsai Tung-ming (蔡東明), an assistant researcher at the institute’s Floriculture Research Center, said that about 90 percent of the 30 million Oncidium sprays exported to Japan come from Taiwan.
“However, the majority of those flowers are a variety of Oncidium Lemon Heart hybrid. Since the hybrid was originally cultivated in Japan, Taiwan has to pay Japan royalties of about ¥50 million [US$500,000] each year to cultivate varieties of it,” he said.
Hopefully, the institute’s new flower, the Tainung No.4-Snow White, can replace some of the Lemon Heart exports to cut expenses, Tsai said.
The Tainung No.4-Snow White is expected to prove popular in Japan and may be able to replace about 30 percent of Oncidium exports to Japan.
In addition to saving on royalties, the new flower can only be grown in Taiwan and Japan, and other countries have to pay royalties to Taiwan to grow it.
The institute said several Japanese companies have already shown interest in the new variety. It hopes the flower can help Taiwan secure Oncidium exports to Japan threatened by new orchid plantations in Southeast Asia.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the