I agree with this! This is why I think the photos should play a supporting role only. They should be of specific things and be diagnostic in nature instead of artistic. The main thing should be a scaffold that tries to quantify the various characteristics of a seedling to help reduce the subjectivity and provide useful and useable data. This is where I need people’s help, especially from those with experience in designing surveys to be used for statistical purposes.
Growth characteristics and regional health issues can only be determined by growing the variety.
I totally agree with this as well. The site is not meant to replace this aspect. The way I see it the site is more like an introduction service to help producers become aware of the new and innovative material people are producing here. If they then want to find out more about the seedling they can contact the breeder directly and open a discourse. It then becomes the onus of the breeder to develop the relationship between the two, or more, parties. They are always going to want to obtain material for their own testing and this was never meant to replace this step.
To make a rose variety available to only one or two producers makes it very difficult to protect that variety with any substantive legal protection due to the very low expected returns.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit. I think making the list available to agents and wholesale nurseries is one way to get around this because they have their fingers in so many pies. I keep thinking about something Michael said years ago about Tesselars… that it took a non-rose nursery to make a success out of the Flower Carpet range… something that has stuck with me ever since. Having said this, I also think that some roses are destined to be short run roses and these might suit boutique nurseries more who are looking for a certain type of rose. For example, I was speaking to the owner of Mistydowns, a rose nursery here in Australia, and he was interested in a seedling I have here that I call ‘Rugosity’. MD focuses on heritage and OGR type roses so this fits the ‘flavour’ of his operation… so I went and registered it and have propagated half a dozen plants to send him over winter so he can trial it for himself. The return on this one will be negligible for me so I’m not even going to pursue any royalties etc. I’m just going to give it to him and propagate a few to sell myself as well. I just hope it might be able to inject some more diversity into the new rose market because it’s really a monoculture now and quite frankly it is one of the main contributing factors in the demise of the rose. Whenever populations become too homogenious they are more susceptible to changes in the environment that might make them less fit to compete. By giving people an avenue to showcase things that are new (young adults and teens LOVE to have stuff that is new… the latest and greatest… even if it’s old lol) but of different types people won’t think they are locked into breeding just stuff they think will sell.
I believe that rose nurseries would prefer a more proactive approach as opposed to being directed to a website of pictures.
This might be true, however; it needs to be said that to get a seedling onto a portfolio is not meant to be an easy process. This is what I meant by saying it should be a little difficult to get a rose into a portfolio. It will require a certain amount of proactivity on the part of the breeder to jump through the hoops required and with any luck this will be reflected in the quality of the portfolio. There will still be a certain amount of proactivity required by the breeder once contact is made and there is nothing stopping breeders from seeking their own contacts either. The main focus of this idea is to provide members of RHA with the means to be able to make that initial contact. Having spoken with Paul Barden about this kind of process years ago, he mentioned that people would ring him up just to ask whether he had anything interesting they could look at. My own experience is also like that having had a few interested parties cold-call me. Maybe this comes after the connection has been made and maybe there will be no need for an RHA member to keep a portfolio once people are aware of what they have and what they are doing.
As Sam McGredy has said “Rose breeders are famous for seeing their geese as swans†How would it be possible to rate a variety against others available as a standard assessment can be very subjective?
There must be a way to construct a survey-style format to be able to judge the worth of a seedling by quantifiable traits. For instance, flushing length, days between flushes, assessment at regular time increments to determine disease status by removing a random sample of 100 leaves and counting the number with evidence of disease and stating this as a % disease (a coefficient of disease susceptibility LOL), etc. That way the subjectivity is reduced and it can be repeated by others in different locations who can repeat the tests to bolster the integrity of the data. I would not even begin to compare new seedlings with varieties that already exist. I think a certain amount of reinventing the wheel is needed here.
I apologise for the negative approach but think all angles should be considered
All the best
Mike
Not at all! This is what I’m after. It needs to considered from every angle possible and I really need the assistance of people to collect ideas. I’m back at work tomorrow so time will again be a limited resource so from this point on I’m going to need help to take it further.
Don, it would be brilliant if it could be integrated into the current format!