Flaming tulips, purple hyacinths and colorful cymbidium were the new favorites at Shanghai's flower market during the Spring Festival.

In the past most of these types of flowers were imported, but a considerable number is now being independently bred in China.

After more than 20 years of research, the self-breeding of corm flower varieties like tulip, hyacinth and hippeastrum has been achieved by the Flower Research Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Agricultural College. A corm is an underground bulb or stem.

The success of the research means that home-grown flowers as well as imported varieties will be featured at Shanghai's World Expo 2010. And for an occasion as big as Expo there is expected to be an enormous demand for flowers to decorate the many displays.

Gorgeous hippeastrum, lily and tulip are the most popular varieties but, due to unsatisfactory breeding results, China must continue to depend on imported flowers.

"Flowers grow from corm land easily," said Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Agricultural College professor, Shi Yimin.

"To remain alive, corm must grow in a temperature below 25 degrees Celsius."

The average temperature in the Netherlands is 17 degrees Celsius, which is quite suitable for breeding these flowers.

"They blossom in April and corm is harvested in July. But in China, only April has the ideal temperature. As soon as May comes, the temperature rises to almost 30 degrees Celsius," Shi said.

The 20-year research program has proved to be a tough experience. Since a flower's heat or cold resistance is genetic, researchers have to spend a great deal of time and effort selecting female parents with the right characteristics.

But all the hard work paid off. The research center has successfully cultivated flowers such as tulips, freesias and petunias. Two years ago, the center started doing research on hippeastrum.

Despite the success of these research programs, China still needs to import a high volume of flowers. The Netherlands exports about 40 million tulip corms to China each year, three million of which goes to Shanghai.

(Source: www.shanghai.gov.cn )