editor’s report Making a Point About Poinsettias Tim Hodson, Editorial Director (847) 391-1019 •
[email protected] id you grow poinsettias in 2008? provide you with some of the information How did they sell this year? you might need to make the right decisions How did your 2008 poinsettia in 2009. season differ from other years? Did any variety perform better The National Poinsettia Trials Dthan the others in the greenhouse? At retail? To help you make educated poinsettia Why? What kind of feedback did you get decisions, this issue features the new vari- from your customers? Did the state of the eties that were trialed this past fall in the economy impact your poinsettia decision- National Poinsettia Trials at North Carolina making process? State University, Purdue University and the That’s a lot of questions to ask, but now is University of Florida. This year, breeders the time to be asking them. As I write this introduced 25 new cultivars in the trials. in mid-January, Christmas 2008 is barely a These cultivars are expected to be available memory for many, but breeders, researchers to growers in 2009. and growers are already starting to think In the “New Releases for 2009” article about Christmas 2009 — and that means (page 20), Drs. Jim Barrett, John Dole and many of them are already starting to make Roberto Lopez report on how the different their poinsettia decisions. varieties performed in their greenhouses in With 2008’s production and sales figures their different regions of the country. still fresh in your mind, this issue of GPN Next month, we will present the results contains results from the 2008 National of the consumer preference surveys that Poinsettia Trials.