Breeding woody ornamentals at ILVO

ILVO has a long tradition of breeding woody ornamentals and outdoor roses. During the last decade the breeding program is mainly concentrated on flowering shrubs as Hibiscus, Hydrangea, Buddleja, Malus, Rosa and Viburnum. Important selection criteria are visual attractiveness, compact growing habit, sterility and disease resistance. To obtain these goals, breeding research is focused on interspecific breeding, embryo rescue, polyploidization and development of bio-assays for disease resistance screening. The breeding program is also an excellent example of a private public cooperation. BEST-select cvba, a cooperative organisation of 20 nurseries, invests already 12 years in this innovative breeding approach in woody ornamentals of ILVO. In return, BEST-select has its voice in the breeding research topics and is involved at an early stage in evaluating new candidate cultivars. Finally, the group gets the exclusive rights on the new products from the breeding work. New releases are protected by plant breeding rights and marketed by BEST-select under own label and trademark. At the same time, an adequate publicity and promotion campaign is running. Marketing funds are gathered by collecting a royalty on each sold plant. Today already 18 cultivars are commercialised under the BEST-select label (www.bestselect.be). Strategic alliances with companies in other countries (Germany, Poland, USA) are signed.