There is a huge boom in the cultivation of ornamentals worldwide, with annual increases in production that normally exceed the forecasts.
The Valentine's Day and Mother's Day seasons account for 25% of the total annual export volume; one quarter of the total exported by entrepreneurs in the sector in countries like Colombia, one of the world’s 3 top exporters of flowers, together with the Netherlands and Ecuador.
According to the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA), roses are the most cultivated species, with a share of more than 37% of the flowers planted in Colombia. In Colombia’s case, more than 500 million roses are exported for Valentine's Day alone, mainly to the US and other European destinations.
Given these data, Agroquímica Codiagro SL, a Spanish company in agricultural nutrition, has spent the past few years testing special solutions to be able to offer special physionutritional plans for these crops, especially in the main producing countries of South America: Colombia and Ecuador. Working hand in hand with distributors, technicians and producers, it has developed a series of guidelines and products that are yielding very good results with roses.
One of these partners is Plinio José Martínez. He is an agronomist of the Campo Abierto company (by Accuracy Management) and at the same time, a producer of roses, mainly of the "Freedom" variety. He has more than 30,000 plants on a farm called Primavera Flower, located in the Colombian town of Sotaquira, Boyacá.
Plinio explains what his success strategy has been: "What we did was to implement adequate nutrition to the pruned plants, as we saw that they are very demanding in many nutritional aspects. These parameters will determine their quality and post-harvest life, with the latter being fundamental when it comes to their export."
His experience in previous years with these products of the Codiagro line has been fundamental. "In previous tests, we tried some products of the Spanish company Codiagro: a patented floatable calcium (Alcaplant new), a corrector of soil salts (Salwax), a natural flowering inducer without synthetic hormones (Floramec), a foliar antistress solution (GreenUp), and a neutral potassium dicarboxylic for root application (Agroxylate-K)."
"We started by applying calcium to the soil through irrigation, along with the salinity corrector, and the results were surprising. It was possible to achieve great changes in the color of the foliage and the plants’ vigor, which convinced us to apply the complete nutritional package.
The result was much longer stems, larger buds, a very intense color, and especially a much longer shelf life in a vase."
"In the plants treated, the rosetting of stems was reduced, which made it possible to obtain a much more homogeneous production per hectare, while far exceeding the national average of 2.6 stems per plant, reaching from 3.6 to 3.8 stems per plant."
Conclusion
"With Codiagro's physionutritional plans, we obtain very high quality stems with the characteristics demanded by the market abroad, while producing many more stems in a small plot."
For more information:
Codiagro
codiagro@codiagro.com
www.codiagro.com