Under Exploited Ornamental Crops: Treasure for Floriculture Industry

The floriculture industry has been experiencing a rapid change with growing demand forornamentals as consumer preferences are changing with time. In the competitive exportmarket, cut flowers and foliage play a crucial role in stabilizing and expanding market share.The existence of enormous genetic diversity and varied agro-climatic conditions providetremendous scope for diversification of novel ornamental crops, which fetch premium prices and possess a huge potential for the future global floriculture industry with their novelty anddiversity. In this context, the introduction of potential under-exploited crops helps to meet theever-increasing demand of the global floriculture industry.There are many promisingornamental plant species that remain unexplored and unexploited as they are cultivated mainly in rural communities that include heliconia (Heliconia psittacorum), bird of paradise (Strelitzia reginae), red ginger (Alpinia purpurata), lisianthus (Eustoma grandiflorum)among the cut flowers and peacock fern (Selaginella wildenowii), butchers broom (Ruscus hypophyllum), Eucalyptus gunnii and Leucadendron are the foliage crops that have the potential to contributefor increasing the national economy. Introducing a new ornamental crop requires investigationson various production and post-production aspects and that could open the door for thesuccessful commercialization of these potential species and hybrids for export purpose.