Ball Horticultural Co. acquires Kordes licensing rights

[Jwindha]

Ball Horticultural Co. acquires Kordes licensing rights:
http://www.nurserymag.com/article/ball- ... h-america/

[Don]

This could be good news. Novaflora had been sitting on a lot of Kordes genetics for a long time with precious few introductions. Maybe this will shake some loose.

It is notable, too, that this is Ball's first foray into roses, though the ambiguous announcement seems to indicate that Ball got only the supermarket mini's and Hutton got die gartenrosen.

[jbergeson]

Don, did you miss last year's announcement that Ball bought Star?

[Don]

Ha! I've been preoccupied with other things than roses and it shows.

Ball is a first class company unlike the carpetbaggers that gobbled up JP, Weeks and the like. Maybe there is hope for the rose industry after all.

If I were a young person wanting a breeder's job I'd be pounding on their door.

[jbergeson]

We get a lot of annuals and perennials, seed & plugs, from or brokered by Ball and they are pretty good but HUGE. I am often slightly unimpressed by their own introductions of vegetative annuals & perennials. The seed department is great. So I have mixed feelings about these acquisitions but I hope your optimism is justified.

[philip_la]

To your point about sitting on genetics, Don, Newflora, as I understand it, evaluates what they think will be marketable and do well and maintain the reputation of their offerings, and then decides what makes it to the American market. Lemon Fizz (Kordes 2001), for instance, they offered, while the Europeans rejected it. After their experience with it, Newflora sent it back to Germany where it won an ADR in 2015, and will probably make it to market in a year or two.

Markets differ, apparently, either due to taste or different strains of disease. I heard, for instance, that KO never made much of a splash in Europe and was considered over-rated. Whether that's a function of tastes, disease, or marketing, I have no idea.

There is a risk in mediocre roses getting over-promoted and hurting the reputation.

I had a quick communication with Chris Pellett at Newflora about the Firebird rose I had mentioned in another post. Of this rose, he said, "...we have had it in trial since 2010. Yes good on disease and the color is really quite unusual. Fairly compact plant and maybe more so as an own root plant. Foliage is quite nice - that typical glossy, bright green foliage we see with the Kordes breeding. We have introduced this variety and it should be available in the next year from rose producers."

[Don]

How many introductions have been made by Newflora compared, say, to Kordes itself?

[philip_la]

That's an interesting question, and I have no idea, but I think it cuts both ways. I have on a few occasions found Kordes' roses for sale here, and tried to locate under some synonym on the Kordes site to compare evaluations only to find they don't offer it. But I do have the impression (as I would expect) that there are more of these German-bred roses in Germany than in the states...

[Don]

I think you can count Newflora introductions on your fingers without re-using any.

The reason Kordes genetics are desirable, from a breeder's perspective, is that they went no-spray two decades ago although it is not clear to me whether they stuck with it completely.

Bill Radler's offerings are probably even more valuable as breeders than Kordes' at this point. The market has moved away from glam lollipops.