Nguyen Huu Hoai Phu, vice director of the department, said that the demand for flowers and ornamental plants in the city increases by 15% each year, but its production capacity only meets less than 50% of the demand.

Each year, the city imports more than 1,200 tonnes of plant varieties and about 7.6 tonnes of flower varieties at high prices. Meanwhile, the city’s export of ornamental plants has reached only 500,000 USD, mostly to Cambodia, the US, Japan, the Netherlands and Canada.

The city's flower and ornamental plant production sector has attracted 2,500 farmer households, with a total farming area of about 2,000 hectares.

Phu held that the city should focus on developing orchid cultivation due to higher economic value compared to other kinds of ornamental plants.

Tran Thi Huong, head of the Cultivation Division under the Sub-Department of Cultivation and Plant Protection, said that the city has a good infrastructure system, workforce and technology to develop the flower and ornamental plant sector, especially orchids.

She said that thanks to the rich orchid genetic resources, the sub-department has developed more than 400 orchid varieties of all kinds.

However, Huong pointed out a number of difficulties facing the sector, including small-scale production facilities, limited resources for high-tech agriculture and low self-supply capacity of plant varieties.

Bui Minh Tri, from the University of Agriculture and Forestry of HCM City, underlined the need to form a concentrated cultivation area serving as a centre for the production and supply of high-quality flowers and ornamental plants to meet the needs of the city, neighbouring localities and for export.

He suggested improving the role of institutes, universities and centres in researching and transferring new varieties of orchids and ornamental plants to meet the market demand, along with the updating of production technologies and enhancement of human resources quality for the sector./. VNA