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Along much of the River Murray, Australia's largest river, traditional crops are in trouble as fruitgrowers try to deal with changing tastes, competing imports, saline soils and river water that has grown more contaminated as it has become less available.
Sustainability is now the measure of crops of the future, with Bookmark Biosphere Reserve near Renmark dedicated to providing examples of how social, environmental and economic sustainability can be made compatible.
On its first open day, held earlier this year, visitors inspected a number of projects ranging from restoration of degraded pasture and wetlands to experimental industries of the future. One of the most popular field trips was to look at native floriculture.
This trial project is exploring how to develop, cultivate and market Australia's native flowers as a sustainable paying crop; one that requires little water, and is suited to the local environment.
There are many native plants to choose from, all with their distinctive appeal, but most with other characteristics that make them less than ideal for the floriculture market. Pearl bluebush is beautiful, but its stem length is short. Correa reflexa is beautiful, too, but its flowers grow along the stem, not at the tips where florists want them. Those problems pose a scientific challenge.
Dr Kate Delaporte from Adelaide University's Department of Horticulture, Viticulture and Oenology is intimately involved with Bookmark. Her work involves the selection and cultivation of native plants that show promise for floriculture, and Bookmark provides her trialling ground.
"When selecting a species for development, one of the primary things we look at is where the flower is located on the stem," said Dr Delaporte. "Most eucalypts that I'm working with have buds that start to appear 12 months before they flower, so when they first appear they are at the end of the stem. 12 months later, the stem has continued to grow, so the flowers are 20 to 30 cm down the stem. Florists require flowers to be at the end of the stem, so here we have a problem."
"You'll go through a population of say 200 plants and you pick out the 5 with the most terminal flowers," said Dr Delaporte. "You'll take those 5 plants and propagate from them, and slowly work you way to achieving most of the characters you want," she said. "It's the same with wheat or rose breeding; you've got a list of characters that you are trying to achieve, and you work your way through the entire population to find those characters."
Is the struggle worthwhile? Floriculture can be a very traditional business.
"The Majority of the Australian market is dominated by European flowers; roses, carnations, gerberas and so on, and natives are often perceived as being very masculine; a funeral flower, not really romantic, soft or delicate," said Dr Delaporte. "It's a slow process but very very rewarding when you can get a plant so that someone else said 'Hey, that's a great plant,' and you can say 'I made that!' That's really good."
A growing appreciation of Australian native plants has seen them adopted and grown in many gardens, but making the leap to floriculture is harder. Partly because of their novelty value, native flowers are often regarded more highly overseas than they are in Australia.
Dr Delaporte was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to travel overseas and evaluate the export potential of native flowers.
"My Churchill Fellowship sent me off to Mediterranean countries because I wanted to investigate what they were doing in terms of Australian native plants; whether they liked them and what the market was," said Dr Delaporte. "There is a big demand, but to get flowers from Australian to European markets is very difficult," she said.
Dr Delaporte cites Bookmark as an interesting area because of its isolation from flower markets. Crops grown there will have to be trucked to Sydney or Adelaide for export by air, a process full of logistical difficulties, but she has proposed a better way to market our floriculture expertise.
"Australia might be better positioned to become a plant breeder and developer of new varieties," she said. "It takes a lot less time, space and infrastructure to develop new plant varieties, then propagate them and license them to be grown in other countries where they are very close to their market."
"Because the varieties will be registered with plant breeders' rights, the breeder will automatically get a royalty from every plant sold, and in some cases, even from every bunch of flowers produced," said Dr Delaporte. "For every plant sold you're getting some money back, instead of having the majority of the risk here in Australia of growing the product and then trying to ship it to Japan or Europe."
The trial ground at Bookmark will eventually grow, as the reserve becomes a self-funding floriculture site. Most of the reserve consists of native vegetation, which incurs few costs. Areas that were cleared long ago will now be used for crops of cultivated native plants that Dr Delaporte believes have real potential as a new industry.
"I am fortunate to be able to work with eucalypts in floriculture, thanks to the foresight of funding agencies and to collaborative arrangements with Bookmark and other industry players," said Dr Delaporte. "Research and development into new floricultural crops will enable the expansion of Australian flora into the world market," she said.
Half the Bookmark area will be used for testing and trials, the other half will soon start producing income, and it is hoped that ultimately the 20 hectares will provide an example of an ecologically sustainable industry, providing grape and citrus growers with examples of alternative crops that can be grown throughout the Murray Mallee district and elsewhere where growing salinity and declining rainfall mean that dryland farming now requires alternative approaches.
Dr Delaporte's work will feature as one of 30 stories in the series 'Wetlands, Drylands,' to be aired on Radio 5UV from October 15
Photos at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/pr/media/photos/2001/
Contact: Dr Kate Delaporte; ( Ph): 61-8-8303-7224, email: kate.delaporte@adelaide.edu.au