A Necessary Struggle

Anne-Marie Hardie

Field trialing has been an essential part of the grower’s purchase decision for decades. Recently, both economics and practicalities have altered the way that the world of plant trialing has functioned. Once largely restricted to the university’s public gardens, plant trialing has expanded to include growers’ trials. The advantages include both exposure of the product to the consumer and the “hands on” experience. This big shift, says Diane Blazek, Executive Director of All-America Selections, has allowed more breeders to work in partnership with the growers.

“From a breeder standpoint, it might be better off to have their customers do the trials than for the breeders to do them,” said Diane. “Because then you have the customer seeing it first hand and they are going to know how to grow something from the get-go once they start to buy the product.”

Despite there being the expansion into grower trials, overall the numbers of trial grounds have decreased, shared Diane. However, the number of trial beds isn’t as important as having diversity in the beds that are available. The real benefit of trial beds—whether it’s the land grant university trials, the grower trials or the in-house trials at Ball—is getting the regional performance evaluation.

“Having multiple sites and multiple conditions to see how the breed performs is critical,” said Susan Schmitz, Trials and Education Manager at Ball Horticultural Company. “Some locations are in sun, shade, varied containers, in ground, etc. All of those options give us different opportunities to see and learn about the summer performance.”

At PanAmerican Seed, field trials are an essential part of the process, with almost every product going through at least two years of field trials at the four main trialing sites. One of the benefits of field trials, said Scott Rusch, who’s Product Development Director for PanAmerican, is that it gives both the breeder and the grower the confidence that the product will perform well in the intended environment. The PanAmerican trials are used to screen any potential anomaly, including looking for both off-types and lack of uniformity.

“When a hybrid isn’t ready, 25% to 55% of the plants may show a lack of uniformity—either the plants are smaller, less flowers, etc.,” said Scott. “An off-type is usually a glaring issue in the hybrid.”

However, looking for anomalies and regional success isn’t the only advantage of field trials. Perhaps one of the biggest advantages is getting the breed out into the market itself, increasing familiarity among both growers and the consumers.

Market exposure
One of the advantages of having trials at both public gardens and at large growers is the exposure. Not only can the growers themselves see how the plants will function in a normal environment, but also the public is able to watch the plant grow.

“Plant trials are an investment for everyone involved—the breeding company is investing to get the product there, the growers use their resources to grow the product,” said Jim Kennedy, Sales Manager for Ball FloraPlant. “The payback comes from the foot traffic that you get coming in and the quality of the individuals that view the trials.” 

Large growing trials, like at Metrolina and Costa, do extremely well at encouraging the decision makers to view the trials, said Jim. This is partially due to the fact that these consumers know that the products in these trials are grown well by credible growers. The decision makers will often view the beds that are grown in areas that are similar in their own. In some cases, they may seek out unique beds that are designed to evaluate the breed’s productivity under certain stressors.

Discovering unique attributes
The extreme heat at the Dallas Arboretum provides the unique opportunity to conduct trials to see how the plants will react. Averaging 3,000 to 5,000 entries a year, Jenny Wegley, Director of Trials and Greenhouse at the Arboretum, is able to see how these products cope under the stress of heat. This information is extremely important to breeders and growers alike, particularly those in the warmer climates. These trials not only assist the growers, but the Arboretum itself.

“We are a display garden, so the plant trials help us to decide which plants to design with,” said Jenny. “Almost a million people decide what to plant in their garden by viewing the gardens.”

Although the Arboretum has made its name with its heat-tolerant trials—awarding top producers with the Flame Proof Award—Jenny’s bi-weekly data collection and photographs allow her to gauge how the plants react to a variety of factors. Last year, she had the unique experience of being able to collect cold-tolerance data.

“We had a lot of snow, ice and a really cold, 16-degree day, when all of our spring growth was coming out. It was very interesting to see the results of that,” said Jenny.

PanAmerican also trials their plants for specific traits, including drought tolerance and disease resistance. The focus of these types of trials is to get them established, but then attempt to replicate the homeowner environment. These trials would involve reviewing how the plants would cope with such stressors like limited watering, fertilization and exposures to naturally occurring pests and diseases.

The challenges of time and standardization
One of the challenges with growing in a different climate is determining the right plant timing for the products. It’s essential, said Jenny, to make a good connection with the breeders so that the seeds get planted at the right time.

Scott agrees, sharing that one of the main challenges he experiences is ensuring the products are transplanted on time, while getting it established poses another challenge, particularly when the plants are young and need to be watered and maintained more carefully. 

Despite the volume of trial grounds throughout North America, with numbers upwards in the 200s, historically there has been little collaboration and standardization among them. This inconsistent rating scale and trialing method made it challenging for the growers, breeders and consumers alike to decipher the data.

“It would be nice if there were more agreement across the industry of what are acceptable results of a field trialing scenario,” said Scott.

This challenge is what inspired the development of the Plant Trial Database, shared Diane. Initially starting with 10 trial grounds, the database has now expanded to include the results of 30 trials. This provides the growers and breeders with one central place to see the results.

“It’s something that the industry really needed. The whole goal is to help make buying decisions,” said Diane. “You can look at it from a regional standpoint, or if you are a grower serving all of the country, you may choose ones based on a particular performance factor.”

Future plans include expanding the database to include perennials and vegetables. In addition, Diane is looking at ways on making it easier for the trial grounds to input the data—from making it mobile friendly to better communication.

Collecting accurate data has probably been the one factor that has plagued field trials for decades. Aware of this challenge, several trials have been extremely proactive in both streamlining and regulating data collection. At the Dallas Arboretum, the employees collect their bi-weekly trial data using an iPad app.

In order to sell the products, the growers and the breeders need the trial results immediately. Disseminating the data quickly is essential, so that people can use the information as soon as it’s collected.

“The data needs to be pretty turnkey from the collection to the compiling to the release of it,” said Jenny. “It needs to be a fairly quick process. We have it down to about 10 to 14 days.”

Encouraging change
Despite the efforts on compiling field trials, one of the challenges remains shifting the perception of the market. At times, growers may still supply lower-performing varieties despite there being evidence that there’s a new, better, variety on the market.

“I think it’s an industry battle that we are starting to fight. Let’s get the best product out there for the consumer,” said Jenny.

Scott agrees, stating that grower field trials help encourage the growers to become more comfortable with launching new products.

“I think growers use the field trials more and more at their own locations to verify that the end consumer will be happy with the product,” said Scott. “The larger growers in the retail segment really want product that will perform well for the end user, so that they can get repeat business. I know that they are using the field trials at their own location to help sell the concepts to the retailer buyer and also to see how much they want to bring it to the market.” GT

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Anne-Marie Hardie is a freelance writer/speaker from Barrie, Ontario, and part of the third generation of the family-owned garden center/wholesale business Bradford Greenhouses in Barrie/Bradford, Ontario.