Does Horticultural Science Have a Future?
John Palmer, President of the New Zealand Society for Horticultural Science
October 2004
As a country delegate to the International Society of Horticultural Science (ISHS), I recently attended a meeting of the ISHS Council in Coolum, Queensland, Australia. One of the items discussed was the future of horticultural science. This was recently addressed by an ISHS/ASHS task force, which met in Providence, Rhode Island and again in Texas. In many developed nations of the world e.g. USA, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, there has been a decline in the horticultural science departments in universities, primarily due to lack of students. Frequently horticultural science has been absorbed into Plant Science departments, which in turn has resulted in fewer horticultural science courses and less graduates claiming to be horticultural scientists. At UC Davis, in a few months the four departments of Pomology, Environmental Horticulture (which includes ornamental horticulture and urban forestry), Vegetable Crops and Agronomy and Range Science will all merge into one department called Plant Sciences. In contrast, in many developing nations e.g. Mexico, Jordan, interest in horticultural science is growing. On a recent visit to Hungary, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that a country of 10 million people has five universities offering degrees in horticultural science and four offering PhD courses. The Korean Society of Horticultural Science has 1800 members and has two meetings a year with an average of 400 papers presented at each meeting.
In contrast to degree courses, even the developed world often has no shortage of courses and students for technical training in horticulture, the problem seems to be a lack of interest in tertiary training in horticulture. Certainly among many college students horticulture is not seen as a science. A survey in Ireland among school career advisors revealed that horticulture was perceived as a manual occupation. Students perception of horticulture can, however be rapidly changed. A recent showing in a Hawke's Bay school of a promotional video showing young people involved in horticulture resulted in over half of the pupils expressing an interest in horticulture compared to only 5% before the showing of the video.
Do we need a redefining of horticultural science? Are scientists in horticultural science uncomfortable with the name and therefore prefer to go under another name e.g. molecular biologist, environmental physiologist or postharvest physiologist? Have we sold our science too short by limiting our perception of horticultural science? One of the country delegates from Germany at the ISHS Council meeting taught landscape and garden architecture at Berlin University of the Arts and found a link from horticulture into music and poetry. As Errol Hewitt said at Coolum we are in the business of "food, fashion and health" and one might add "well being". Certainly to provide people with an ever increasing selection of nourishing fruit and vegetables and their gardens and urban landscape with a wider range of colours, textures, forms and scents is a very worthwhile mission in life. Within the developed world it seems that the demand for the latter part of horticulture is becoming far more important than the former. There also seems to be an expectation in the developed world of a continuing supply of fresh fruit and vegetables at cheap prices so more of the disposable income will be available for electronic gizmos or holidays. Yet food is essential for life and consuming it can be one of life's great pleasures. G reat challenges remain before us in horticulture science to satisfy the needs of the consumer of the future with his concerns not only for food that is appealing to the eye, stimulating to the palate and good for health but food that is also produced in a sustainable way. In order to achieve this, horticultural science needs the input of all the science disciplines so we can continue to manipulate the growth and development of our crops to meet the consumer's requirements.