Boasting a complete production chain and extensive breeding resources, Tainan City in southern Taiwan is home to one of the world’s leading orchid seedling cultivation clusters.

Taiwan International Orchid Show (TIOS) took place at Taiwan Orchid Plantation (TOP) earlier this year in Houbi District of Tainan City, southern Taiwan. A record 240,000-plus visitors thronged the 10-day annual event featuring business operators and specialists from more than 30 countries and territories. They came to place orders, inspect the prize-winning orchids, network and learn more about one of Taiwan’s key agricultural exports.

Since its launch in 1998, TIOS has steadily grown to become one of the largest of its kind in the world alongside the Japan Grand Prix International Orchid Festival in Tokyo and the World Orchid Conference, which Taiwan is scheduled to host in 2020. In recent years, the show has regularly achieved foreign orders of up to NT$10 billion (US$331.1 million) satisfied by local vendors over the following three to five years, according to TIOS 2017 organizer National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) Research and Development Foundation in Tainan.

New orchid hybrids are regularly produced by Taiwan Sugar Corp. in southern Taiwan’s Tainan City. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

Global Leadership

The leading role played by Taiwan in shaping market trends in the global orchid industry was highlighted by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in her opening address at the floral event. With local exports of the flower reaching NT$5.57 billion (US$184.4 million) last year for nearly 90 percent of the industry’s total output value, her pledge to help maintain Tainan’s international leadership in orchid species development and seedling supply makes good sense in terms of business and national pride.

Currently, the top destinations for Taiwan’s orchid exports are the U.S., Japan and the EU in that order. The president said the government will step up efforts promoting orchid collaboration and exchanges with these established markets, as well as emerging ones in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Central and South America. To this end, Tsai announced the establishment later this year of the Taiwan Orchid Species Business Service Center. A collaborative project between Tainan City Government and Taiwan Orchid Growers Association (TOGA), the facility represents a cluster of 60 locally based orchid growers operating in the 175-hectare TOP.

The center will capitalize on the resources of regional academic sectors such as NCKU’s Orchid Research and Development Center, which formed the Orchid Biotechnology and Creativity Industry-University Alliance four years ago in collaboration with other schools like National Taiwan University in Taipei City, as well as National Chiayi University and National Chung Hsing University in southern and central Taiwan, respectively. Chen Wen-huei (陳文輝), an NCKU center research fellow, is helping oversee the alliance as it seeks to boost the business competitiveness of Taiwan’s orchid industry through building core operational strengths in areas such as breeding and cultivation, disease control, greenhouse management and plant nutrition.

Orchids begin their lives as a tissue-cultured seedling in a glass flask. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

Overcoming Hurdles

“We face increasing competition from the Netherlands in the U.S. market,” said Chen, who doubles as a professor with NCKU’s Department of Life Sciences and Institute of Tropical Plant Sciences. At present, 30 percent of Taiwan’s orchid exports are sent to the U.S. and account for around 70 percent of market demand there. First and foremost, Taiwan ships large seedlings mostly from the Phalaenopsis group to overseas destinations, now amounting to 87 countries and territories, he added.

Up until 2006, Taiwan’s largest orchid market was Japan, which still imports large quantities of flowers cut from homegrown Oncidium orchids. But after the U.S. greenlighted imports of Taiwan Phalaenopsis orchid seedlings potted in growing media in January 2005, the country’s exports to that market took off, according to Chen.

A condition of the approval was that the plants were grown in bacteria-free greenhouses built to U.S. specifications. These are now the standard in such companies as Char Ming Agriculture Co., one of the largest TOP firms and a key TOGA member. In the past, seedlings had to be cleaned before transportation to avoid transmission of plant diseases, resulting in a low survival rate, long recovery time and poor plant quality, Chen said. The trials and tribulations faced by growers during this period put them in good stead to overcome similar challenges when the U.S. extended the same treatment to Oncidium orchids from Taiwan in March last year.

Staffers pot orchid seedlings at Char Ming. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

Chen cut his teeth in the orchid game while working for Tainan-headquartered Taiwan Sugar Corp. (Taisugar) as a researcher and leading proponent of sugarcane and Phalaenopsis breeding at the state-run company’s Agriculture Business Division. Su Chien-yuen (蘇建元‬), head of the unit, said in the 1970s during Taiwan’s economic takeoff, local hobby growers started collecting orchid species for cross-breeding to raise unique varieties.

They organized clubs for sharing knowledge and experiences before a number of orchid nurseries emerged in the 1980s around the country to sell unique hybrids for the domestic market in small quantities at high prices.

Industrial Scale

In the 1990s, Taisugar introduced greenhouse systems from the Netherlands, and developed indigenous cultivation facilities programmed to control humidity, light and temperature. This was the foundation of the commercial mass production model employed by Taiwan Phalaenopsis enterprises catering to foreign markets. “These orchids quickly became an invaluable part of the horticultural trade due to their great variety of hybrid species and flowers that may last up to three months,” Su said.

Cutting-edge R&D is taking place in the labs of Orchid Research and Development Center at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

Taisugar’s orchid industry got off the ground in the late 1980s by cross-breeding a species native to Taiwan and another from Japan. The company now maintains one of the world’s richest Phalaenopsis genetic sources in the form of a repository containing 48 of the planet’s 63 known endemic species. New hybrids are regularly produced by Taisugar, with selected species put into mass production at greenhouses using a large-scale tissue duplication procedure. The already mature technique is widely employed and typically divided among a number of orchid farms responsible for different stages of the yearslong process.

Char Ming, for instance, cultivates larger seedlings for export. But its products are the final stage of a production cycle starting with labs raising tissue-cultured seedlings in glass flasks before handing off to growers specializing in the soft pot stage of the orchid’s life cycle. The process can take more than four years for the plant to grow into a large seedling.

Close Cooperation

Lee Tsang-yu (李蒼裕), CEO of Char Ming, said TOP has worked hard to iron out the cluster’s orchid production kinks on the road to establishing a complete supply chain. A former head of TOGA who started in the business as a hobby grower, Lee is pleased to observe the strengthening of bonds between companies at different stages of production. “They’re connected to each other in more of a cooperative and complementary mode than a competing one.”

Different orchid species are exhibited at the annual Taiwan International Orchid Show. (Photos by Chang Su-ching)

TOP, which was fully operational in 2012, rents well-equipped, computer-controlled greenhouses to farmers and provides easily accessible, low-interest loans as well as a platform for business exchanges. This approach has significantly contributed to the success of the cluster and kept the industry on the growth track in the face of intense competition from abroad. Lee attributes one of the reasons for TOP’s remarkable performance to its concentration of undivided farmland. Economy of scale in the agricultural sector is rarely achieved in Taiwan due to the number of individual owners of small parcels of land, he said.

But Lee is not one to overlook the importance of the academic sector in advancing the orchid industry and agricultural sector as a whole. One way academic institutions are lending a helping hand is through boosting the industry’s basic research competence. A milestone project completed by the NCKU center in 2014 decoded the genes of the endemic Phalaenopsis equestris orchid found mostly on outlying Little Orchid Island off the coast of southeastern Taitung County. The findings helped target genes susceptible to disease and pests.

In reflecting on the seedling cultivation cluster nurtured by TOP and its contribution to the health and future prospects of Taiwan’s orchid industry, Lee said there is no question individuals deserve the lion’s share of credit for today’s healthy state of affairs. Yet, taking the business to the next level cannot be anything but a case of all hands on deck. “Ongoing cooperation among the academic, public and private sectors is a must if the industry is to fulfill its potential.”