Rocket Farms Announces Partnership with SOGO

06-Oct-2009

Rocket Farms Executive Vice President, Marc Clark, returned from Taiwan last week from his routine visit to SOGO headquarters, a top orchid breeder in Asia. The outcome of Rocket Farms’ ongoing partnership with SOGO has produced in one very visible result: a growing variety of orchid variations in the U.S. market.

Since Rocket Farms entered the world of orchids four years ago, it has consistently been a leader in the field and an innovator of orchid breeding in the country. Rocket Farms currently produces approximately 80% orchid varietals and only 20% traditional white and pink orchids- a clear sign of progression in orchid development. Part of this success can be contributed to the company’s relationship with Asian breeders who specialize in orchid research and hybridization to secure the stability and propagation efficiency of new varieties.

SOGO, Rocket Farms’ principal foreign partner, is the world’s leading innovator of varieties of Phalaenopsis. The company does hundreds of crossings each year, releasing 50 new lines into the markets of only the most highly stabilized and meri-cloned plantlets propagated from the lab. One evolution now in progress is tri-spiked orchids, a rarity in a market still dominated with single-spiked orchids.

Rocket Farms allows the plants to stay in Taiwan throughout the initial breeding process and ships the orchids to the U.S. in sphagnum moss, a processes recently approved by the USDA, to spike the flowers in Rocket Farms’ greenhouses in California. Not only does the moss allow for less frequent watering, but it also enables orchids to be transported without inflicting root damage, often a result of barren roots throughout shipment.

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