ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Head Office of Horticulture Cooperatives (CSOiP) in Warsaw; Trade House of Polish Academy of Sciences (DHN) in Warsaw; Family Greenhouse Operation of Mr K. Szyszkiewicz in Lodz; Family Greenhouse Operation and Plant Micropropagation Laboratory of Mr M. Norwa in Piaseczno, near Warsaw.

We would also like to thank The Experimental Station for Mushroom Production belonging to the Institute of Vegetables Crops in Skierniewice;, the Family Greenhouse Operations of Mr L. Piekacz and A.J. Zak, Lodz; the Family Ornamental Nursery Operation of Mr S. Grabczewski in Warsaw, the Ornamental Plant Experimental Field Station belonging to the Institute of Pomology and Floriculture in Nowy Dwor, for their help and guidance during the various professional excursions, as well as to the many staff members and employes of the Research Institute of Pomology and Floriculture who helped us in the organizational work.


SYMPOSIUM, GROWTH REGULATORS AND POLISH ORNAMENTAL HORTICULTURE - AN OPENING ADDRESS
SYMPOSIUM, GROWTH REGULATORS AND POLISH ORNAMENTAL
HORTICULTURE - AN OPENING ADDRESS

I have the great privilege to welcome all the participants of this Third International Symposium on Growth Regulators in Ornamental Horticulture, organized under the auspices of ISHS by the Institute of Pomology and Floriculture in Skierniewice, Poland. As a vice-president of the Section of Ornamental Plants of ISHS for Eastern Europe. I am very honored to have the opportunity to welcome here the 70 participants from 15 countries including delegates from 6 socialist countries in addition to Poland. I believe that Skierniewice is a very good place for scientists to gether from the Eastern and Western countries of this so artificially divided world with the aim to discuss, in a friendly atmosphere, our common research and scientific problems. I belive also that this meeting will give to all of you a very good opportunity to make friendly contacts with scientists of other countries, which is profitable for future research and the exchange of scientific information.

For the participants that were not present at the previous symposium, I would like to say that Skierniewice is the town where 2 research institutes are located which belong to the Ministry of Agriculture. These are the Institute of Pomology and Floriculture and the Institute of Vegetable Crops. In both of these institutes, the research performed covers all fields of horticulture, including fruits, flowers, ornamental plant, aphid culture and all vegetables produced under covers and in the open field. This town is thus the largest center of applied and theoretical horticultural research. The Institutes cooperate in many fields with the Agricultural Academies which educate the students and specialists for agriculture and horticulture and conduct basic and, to a lesser extent, applied research in agriculture and horticulture.

One of the fields of research which is gradually expanding in our Institute is the improvement of plant growth and development through the use of growth regulators. This concerns fruits as well as floriculture and ornamental plants. We believe that ornamental horticulture especially, is an area where growth regulators are already used in a very wide range of species, cultivars and technologies of production.

According to the estimations made by A.R.Cooke (1987), the world-wide production of growth regulators reached the amount of 300–400 million dollars which accounts for about 3% of the value of agricultural chemicals, pesticides, herbicides and others used at the time. Most growth regulators are used for such crops as cotton and tobacco (45%), apples (15%), other fruits and vegetables (30%) as well as other crops, including floricultural and ornamentals (only about 10%). The use of plant growth regulators in agriculture increases yearly by 3–4%.

In an excellent review article, R.A.Larson (1985) presented hundreds of species and cultivars of floricultural plants to which plant growth regulators are applied to modify growth habit and elevate the quality of plants during production before their removal from the greenhouse or field. Exogenous growth regulators are also used more and more extensively in the postharvest period which has been reviewed by both Halevy and Mayak (1979, 1981) and Baker (1983). Very intensive development of micropropagation methods for floriculture and ornamental plants also enlarges the volume of plant growth regulators used in this technology. We can assume already that the very high efficiency of the floriculture and the ornamental industry would be absolutely impossible without the application of various plant growth regulatory substances. The tremendous progress made in ornamental horticulture production in the last two decades and in the elevation of plant quality prior to and after harvest is dependent to a great extent, on the wide application of growth regulatory substances.

In the last 2–3 years, parallel to the introduction of economic reforms in our country, we have observed a great increase in the export of ornamental and floriculture plants to the countries of Western Europe. Several new joint-venture firms have been created and cooperation with foreign enterprises has also been developed. We believe that the expansion in this field will be continued and accelerated.

This gives an oportunity for the Polish floriculture industry to introduce the advanced technology from western firms to Polish growers and enables faster development of the export of plants to various countries. Poland is already the biggest producer of floriculture and ornamentals among socialist countries. It reaches the volue of about 300-400 million dollars a year. In recent 10 years we have noted very rapid expansion of tissue culture laboratories for micropropagation of floricultural and ornamental plants. We have already in Poland, about 120 such laboratories which have the potential to produce about 100 million seedlings a year, although output of these laboratories presently does not exceed 30–40 million plantlets. Only about 20 of these laboratories produce more than 1 million plantlets per year. Some of them produce less than 100,000 and are used directly by growers for their own production or to supply thir neighbors. Many of them are in the process of expansion and development. Larger ones cooperate with foreign enterprises in Holland and Germany and also sell the propagation material to Eastern and Western countries. Dnring the Symposium we are going to visit several floriculture greenhouse operations, tissue culture laboratories, and nurseries of ornamental plants which export their products to Western Europe.

We do believe that we are in the process of creating in Poland a competitive floriculture and ornamental plant industry which is able to cooperate with other countries both in internal and European markets.

I hope that our symposium will make a valuable contribution also to the expansion of ornamental horticulture in the near future both in Poland and in other countries. I wish you fruitful discussion, more friendly contacts with scientists of other countries and new good impressions of polish floriculture.