As competition in the global orchid market has become increasingly fierce, research fellows at the Taiwan Agriculture Research Institute said Taiwan needs to introduce new technology to sharpen its competitive edge in the sector.
Noting that RFID is a powerful emerging technology that enables companies to better keep track of their assets, tools and inventories, the researchers said introduction of the technology to the orchid business will help improve the accuracy rate of order delivery dates and quantities, thereby increasing customer satisfaction.
If RFID technology is integrated with other automated production and management systems, local orchid productivity could also be raised significantly, according to the researchers.
Pointing out that orchid cultivation — and butterfly orchids in particular — plays a very important role in Taiwan's agricultural sector, an official of the Taiwan Agriculture Research Institute under the Cabinet-level Council of Agriculture (COA) said Taiwan must pull out all the stops to breed new orchid hybrids and develop new cultivation know-how to maintain its market niche.
According to the latest annual agricultural statistics released by the COA, Taiwan's flower acreage totals about 13,475 hectares, with an annual production value of about NT$12.36 billion (US$374.55 million).
The figures account for only about 1.78 percent of Taiwan's total agricultural production acreage and 7.34 percent of the total annual farming production value, respectively.
Despite the relatively small share of horticulture in terms of acreage and total production value, the official went on, the unit production value in the sector is about NT$918,000 per hectare.
Among the various floral species cultivated commercially in Taiwan, orchid farms cover about 592 hectares, but their combined annual production value amounts to NT$2.874 billion, representing a unit production value of NT$4.86 million per hectare and indicating that orchids are a high-yielding cash crop.
