The Flora Expo opened in Taipei yesterday, showcasing more than 1,000 types of flowers, including 800 patented plants cultivated by Taiwanese farmers.
Taiwan’s flower industry is valued at NT$17.6 billion (US$632.2 million), with exports totaling about NT$5.7 billion per year, Agriculture and Food Agency Director-General Hu Jong-i (胡忠一) said.
The country’s Phalaenopsis aphrodite and Oncidium flexuosum orchids, as well as domestically bred Guiana chestnuts, have reached iconic status in the global flower market thanks to the efforts of the nation’s farmers, he said.
Photo: Yang Yuan-ting, Taipei Times
Many flowers featured at the three-day fair at the Nangang Exhibition Center have been created by researchers at the Council of Agriculture, including a new painter’s-palette flower cultivated by the Agricultural Improvement Station in Kaohsiung, he said.
The cultivar, named Kaohsiung No. 3, is resistant to disease and insects, and grows at a steady pace, which makes harvesting times easier to predict, he said.
The cultivar accounts for 8 percent of the wholesale market in Taiwan and has the potential to replace imported painter’s-palette flowers, he added.
Taiwanese entities hold 1,387 plant patents, including 864 domestic developments, Hu said.
About 80 percent of the patents have been bred for producing beautiful flowers, he added.
The flower industry is incessantly developing new cultivars, which makes the protection of intellectual property a regulatory challenge, he said.
Mutual recognition agreements with other countries are one of the most effective solutions for protecting the interests of patent holders, he said.
Taiwan has mutual recognition agreements with Australia, the EU, Indonesia, Israel, New Zealand, Thailand and Vietnam — the most recent of which was signed on Friday last week, he said.
The agreements protect the right of breeders in signatory countries or regions, and save businesses the time they would otherwise spend on filing applications in multiple jurisdictions, he said.
Officials are working with lawmakers to strengthen intellectual property protections stipulated in the Plant Variety and Plant Seed Act (植物品種及種苗法), with the aim to elevate the nation’s standards to the levels of member states of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, he added.
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