Industry news

Researcher creates new winter-hardy hibiscus
A Texas A&M plant physiologist has bred hardy hibiscus selections with maroon leaves and multicolored flowers.
Commercialization of the flowers by Dariusz Malinowski; co-worker William Pinchak, AgriLife Research-Vernon; and Steve Brown, Texas Foundation Seed Service program director, is a part of the research on non-traditional or under-utilized crops that have value because of drought tolerance.

Malinowski said one objective of the breeding program is to create lines or cultivars with a range of colors.

“We have created so far many more colors, like lavender or mauve, different shades of fuchsia and pinks,” he said. “One flower we have, we want to have an almost burgundy color. Another is lavender with a big flower, big petals. And we have a plum color that is rare in hibiscus.”

The goal is to have at least 11- to 12-inch-diameter flowers, Malinowski said.

“We can manipulate the color and still maintain the large flowers with nice texture,” he said. “We also can combine the trait of a large flower with dual colors and nice texture. That is an important value for the next step of the breeding program, to create dual colored flowers.”

One goal left for the breeding program is to create a blue flowering hibiscus, Malinowski said. Another objective is to create cultivars with dark leaves, he said. He’s produced one plant with maroon leaves.

The hibiscus can basically be grown from South Central Texas to Canada, as long as the required winter period is long enough for them to go dormant after the first frost, Malinowski said. The plants re-sprout from the root the following spring.

For more: Dariusz Malinowski, dmalinow@ag.tamu.edu

USDA delays Phytophthora ramorum notification requirement
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) sent a memo to state and territory agricultural-regulatory officials saying it has delayed implementation of the federal order requiring pre-notification for shipping P. ramorum-host nursery stock from regulated and quarantine areas.

“This action will allow for the additional time needed to incorporate revisions to the Federal Order and establish necessary measures to support implementation,” the memo stated.

The delay is in place until further notice, according to USDA APHIS.

The Oregon Association of Nurseries (OAN) lobbied USDA to delay the order.

But the delayed order remains a serious cause for concern for large and small nurseries, according to OAN officials. If adopted, it would require nurseries “to generate a voluminous amount of paperwork that would not accomplish the stated goal of improving trace forward efforts. This would increase costs for nurseries that already face a struggling economy, yet it wouldn’t provide any additional safety. Worse, it would treat clean West Coast nurseries exactly the same as those few that have tested positive.” 

For more: APHIS, Prakash K. Hebbar, (301) 734-5717. OAN, www.oan.org.