Biodiversity and Conservation of Ornamental Crops

Abstract

Ornamental plants are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design, as house plants, for cut flowers and specimen display, and are associated with the mankind from time immemorial. Approximately, 406,700 species of plants are available on Earth, and out of these plants, 85,000–99,000 species of plants have ornamental value such as trees, shrubs, climbers and creepers, palms, ferns, orchids, grasses, bamboos and reeds, cacti and succulents, annuals, bulbs, and other flowering crops, spreading over the tropical, subtropical, and temperate zones of the world. The market for ornamental plants is constantly increasing day by day but at the same time is subjected to periodic trend-driven changes. Indeed, every year, hundreds of new cultivars, replacing the current assortment, are produced. Hence, this diversity in ornamentals constitutes a great breeding material source for development of novel varieties. For this reason, the protection and storage of these valuable genetic resources is of great importance to be always able to meet market demands. Conservation of the biodiversity of the Earth’s ornamental crops is a continuous process of development for human benefit in response to changes in the design of gardens as well as the commercial exploration of different flowering crops. In this chapter, a wide diversity of ornamental species and their methods of conservation using various approaches are described. Presently, ornamental germplasm are conserved through in situ and ex situ methods in forests, national parks, botanical gardens, and arboreta. Also, the use of recent biotechnological tools, ranging from the drying of seeds to cryopreservation of embryos, pollens, etc., has served as a boon in preserving the diversification of ornamentals and also in producing quality planting materials available to the actual market of ornamental plants.