PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (April 17, 2020) – Earlier this year, Prairie View Mayor David Allen headed to Vietnam in search of opportunities for the city and the university. One of the results of his overseas trip was a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Prairie View, the university and Kim Ngan Orchids, one of Vietnam’s major orchid businesses.
Orchids inside a Kim Ngan Orchids production facility in Vietnam.
The MOU should be finalized in the coming months, and the possibilities are exciting, especially to Aruna Weerasooriya, Ph.D., associate professor and research leader of Plant Systems in the Cooperative Agricultural Research Center (CARC) at Prairie View A&M University.
“The Vietnam team is working on their draft MOU, and it will be ready in a month or two,” said Weerasooriya. “We had a meeting with the Consulate General of Vietnam last month, and she said it will be a straightforward collaboration process, and project can be started within this year.”
Weerasooriya said the MOU includes bringing the Phalaenopsis, or moth orchid, business to the City of Prairie View, which will also bring new job opportunities.
“Most importantly, PVAMU will have a great opportunity to develop new research and academic programs on floriculture.”
Floriculture is the cultivation of flowers, which includes everything from growing flowers for gardens and florists, as well as developing new varieties of plants. And one of those that’s in the works is specific to PVAMU.
“I am working with the company to develop a new breed that has a dark purple and yellow color petals so that we will be able to brand this new breed with PVAMU name when we have the ribbon-cutting for the new business,” said Weerasooriya.
While PVAMU doesn’t have any research or academic programs in the subject of floriculture, Weerasooriya says that he has heard several high school students mention their desire to study floriculture when CAHS hosts its Career Development Event (CDE).
“Having a private partnership with the world’s leading orchid company would help us to develop new academic and research programs. And, the students would get opportunities to get trained in the real enterprise while we scientists work with them to help solve the scientific problems they have in the industry,” he said.
“It [also] fits in well with our land grant mission in that it provides another avenue for limited resource producers to diversify and enhance income,” said Gerard D’Souza, dean and director of Land-Grant Programs at PVAMU’s College of Agriculture and Human Sciences.
Weerasooriya said the partnership will provide students with hands-on experience in orchid cultivation and marketing. They would learn tissue culture, breeding, pest and disease management, and large-scale greenhouse management.
“Although the whole orchid production is going to be in greenhouses, the subtropical type climatic conditions [here in Southeast Texas] will cut down the energy costs and boost larger blooms,” he said. “Orchids are considered as a luxury specialty crop in the floriculture industry in the USA. There is a great market potential for orchids in the Houston area.”
Weerasooriya added that Texas’ climate helps the plant to produce larger and healthier blooms.
“Phalaenopsis blooms have a long life,” he said. “They are one of the longest-blooming, producing flowers that last from two to six months before dropping. Phalaenopsis have also been known to bloom two to three times per year once they have reached a mature size.”
Aruna D. Weerasooriya, Ph.D.
The project is well within Weerasooriya’s wheelhouse; he’s spent most of his professional career studying plants and their uses for humanity. He also recently had a lichen species named after him. He believes strongly that being able to add floriculture to PVAMU’s curriculum will not only enhance the college’s offerings, but also serve to attract more students and researchers to the university.
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By Holly Beretto