Floriculture

[4] For years, flowers were grown, seasonally for the specific crop, close to the market in Europe, North America and Asia.

However, many crops of the floral industry have moved to a specific climate, typically in the mountains of South America, Africa and China, so certain plants can be grown year around[5] where hand labor is available.

Floriculture crops have a high value to humans, so the cost of an expensive production system - greenhouses,[7][8][9] automated environmental control, automated irrigation and fertilization, robotic seed, transplant and container handling, supplemental photosynthetic lighting - is necessary to produce these plants efficiently for the world-wide markets.

Most horticulture and many botany programs in the world had scientists working on plant propagation through tissue culture techniques from the 1950s to the 1980s.

[24][25][26] These programs expanded the knowledge base on a wide range of taxa and allowed industry to find the connection to commercial production.

Plant tissue culture allowed new, unique phenotypes and genotypes to be propagated in large numbers quickly.

[27] Uniquely, tissue cultured geraniums were heat treated to allow the identification and removal of many viruses, virus-indexed.

Heat treatment of tissue culture of many taxa has since been used to remove bacteria and virus pathogens in various floriculture crops.

The next step was to use other materials, sphagnum moss peat and vermiculite, in a 1:1 ratio, the Cornell peat-lite mix.

[34] The harvest and use of peat for growing media remains an environmental issue in North America and Europe.

Many countries have limited controls on pesticide usage but flower handlers and consumers could be contaminated by the residue.

[41][42] Research continues on biological control of greenhouse insect, mite and plant pathogens to reduce pesticide use in floriculture crop production.

[52] Work was completed to standardize a plant's need for light (radiant energy) from natural and artificial sources.

[57][58][59] Supplemental lighting has been used to optimize production of seedlings,[60][61] bedding plants,[22] cut flowers[62] and other crops.

Nutrients important to the flowers were held in the soil matrix and supplemented with additions of organic matter and animal manure.