Floriculture

Floriculture, or flower farming, is a discipline of horticulture concerned with the cultivation of flowering and ornamental plants for gardens and for floristry, comprising the floral industry. Flowers are high value commodities used in various ways in domestic and social activities and in industries such as essential oils, dry flowers, natural dye extraction etc.

Cultivation of flowers provides opportunity to farmers to earn a better livelihood and harvest more profit per unit area. Floriculture has received considerable interest in India in recent years from the policymakers, researchers, agricultural and horticultural planners. The enhancement in per capita income and urbanization has led to increased demand for flowers. An estimate of National Horticulture Board puts the area under flower crops at 2,48510hactare with a production of 1685000 tonnes of loose flowers and 472000 tonnes.

The liberalization of industrial and trade policies paved the way for development of export-oriented production of cut flowers. The new seed policy had already made it feasible to import planting material of international varieties. It has been found that commercial floriculture has higher potential per unit area than most of the field crops and is therefore a lucrative business. Indian floriculture industry has been shifting from traditional flowers to cut flowers for export purposes. The liberalized economy has given an impetus to the Indian entrepreneurs for establishing export oriented floriculture units under controlled climatic conditions.

Uttarakhand has almost all the different agro-geo climatic zones making it particularly conducive to commercial horticulture and floriculture. Floriculture is being developed in a big way in order to meet the demand of both - the domestic as well as the foreign markets. The climate is ideal for growing flowers all round the year. It is also proposed to establish floriculture parks with common infrastructure facilities for sorting, pre-cooling, cold chain, processing, grading, packing and marketing facilities.

Portfolio of Floriculture