The Hindu : Front Page : What’s in a name? a lot for this ‘Taj Mahal’ rose

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Monday, Feb 18, 2008
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What’s in a name? a lot for this ‘Taj Mahal’ rose

R.K. Radhakrishnan

“We expect to grow
about 7.5 million roses initially”

Taj Mahal roses

CHENNAI: A million ‘Taj Mahal’ roses in Europe for the next Valentine’s Day. And twice that number in Asia and Australia. Having patented a variety of deep-red rose bred near Hosur ‘Taj Mahal,’ TANFLORA, a joint venture floriculture initiative between Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation and a private development firm MNA Associates, aims to ride on ‘Taj Mahal’ to boost exports to 10 million cut roses next year.

“Trial production has begun at our farm in Hosur and the response has been fantastic,” said Ramasundaram, Chairman and Managing Director, TIDCO.

It all began sometime early last year when TANFLORA gained confidence, having crossed the production and export targets that it had set.

This year too, out of the six million roses exported for Valentine’s Day, TANFLORA accounted for about three million. Then began a round of scouting in the world markets to find out what varieties of roses the organisation could sell and where it would get a better price.

“When we were looking around, we found that some foreign producers had named their produce after Bombay and Himalayas at a show in Holland. We thought that we should have, at least, one patented variety. We checked if Taj Mahal was a patented name. It was not. We applied for a patent and got it. And then worked backwards with our breeders to come up with a variety that would justify the name,” said Mr. Ramasundaram on how the name came to be identified with a variety of rose.

With the trial production complete, TANFLORA plans to begin commercial production. “From October this year, we plan to begin marketing support for the variety in Europe and other markets. We have planted on 5 hectares. We expect to grow about 7.5 million roses initially. We will begin getting about 25,000 roses a day from the farm from November this year,” said Najeeb Ahamad, Managing Director, TANFLORA. Since the organisation does not want to depend only on one market, it has also decided to take up its “Buy-a-Taj-Mahal” campaigns in Japan, Australia, Dubai and Singapore too. These markets are expected to import twice the amount of Taj Mahals.

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