At Flora Expo Astana, the largest professional floriculture and landscaping exhibition in Central Asia, flowers were not presented simply as decoration. They appeared as the end result of years of breeding, highly specific growing conditions, color technology and export strategy. Conversations with exhibitors from Ecuador and the Netherlands showed how the global flower trade is increasingly shaped by innovation as much as beauty.
For Marcelo Vallejo, sales manager from Ecuador, the flower business begins not in the greenhouse or at the florist's shop, but at the level of genetics. His company works as a rose breeder, developing new varieties that are later grown and exported by partner farms around the world.
We are the first part of the rose business. We do genetic crosses yearly to get new varieties. We do around 300,000 or more crosses per year, then we got seeds, and test these seeds, then we got the new varieties after six, seven years, around eight years.
According to him, the journey from an idea to a commercially successful rose takes years, as each variety must be tested in a wide range of climatic conditions in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, as well as countries across South America and Europe. They test not only the appearance of the bud, but also how it opens as the flower, its resistance to diseases, shades, shape, and ability to withstand transportation. In the end, only a few varieties remain out of thousands of attempts.
In Ecuador, for example, we try around 6,000 different crosses yearly. And we got two, three varieties just after seven, eight years of trial testing.
Vallejo noted that the market is now moving beyond conventional rose forms and colors. Standard white and red roses still matter, but growers are seeing surging demand for garden-style roses with unusual silhouettes, layered petals and unexpected color combinations.
Right now, it's very famous, the garden types. The world is quite boring about the same whites, reds, whatever. So then we try to create these kind of garden shapes.
At the company’s stand, varieties such as Apple Jack, Candy Espresso, Angel Espresso, Dragonfly, and Melon Espresso were presented. These are exactly the kinds of roses with wavy petal shapes, greenish centers, or unusual color transitions that are shaping a new visual trend in the industry.
One of the more revealing details in Vallejo's explanation was the way breeders track each individual cross. Every experimental flower carries a code that records its lineage.
The breeding year was in 2020. The 00 is the father, 10 is the mother, and this is 008. This is the eight seed collected of these roses.
The numbering system is more than a technical label. It traces the flower back to a specific breeding year, parent lines and even the sequence of seed collection. In an industry where only a tiny fraction of trials lead to a commercially viable variety, that precision matters.
Another Ecuadorian exhibitor arrived at Flora Expo Astana with a more direct commercial ambition: to turn Kazakhstan into a new export market. For the farm, this was a first appearance in the country, and the message was clear from the outset.
This is our first time that we are exposing here in Kazakhstan. We have been in production for 30 years, and we have a very high reputation in many markets. We hope that Kazakhstan is going to be our next market.
The company framed Ecuadorian roses as a product shaped by geography as much as by cultivation. High elevation, equatorial sunlight and irrigation technology were all presented as reasons for the country's competitive edge.
We have the best roses in the world because of the geographical location, because of the technology we have. We have 12 hours of sun all year round, and we are at 3,000 meters elevation on the equator line, so it gives us the best roses in the world.
But the farm was not only showing natural rose colors. It was also marketing tinted roses, flowers that are cut fresh and then placed in colored water so the petals absorb pigment. The result can be a single custom shade, a national flag palette or even a rainbow effect.
We have a special program where we can tint the roses to any colors you like. We can also make it, if you want, with the colors of the flag or of the football team or anything you want.
Asked how the process works, he described it in simple terms: 'You cut it and you put it in the water of ink. That's all.' He also stressed that the coloring is done after cutting, not through the soil or while the flower is growing. Pricing, he added, depends less on the novelty of the flower itself than on freight, order volume and seasonal demand. As in much of the flower trade, the market rises and falls around key dates such as Valentine's Day, International Women's Day and Mother's Day.
If the Ecuadorian exhibitors focused on roses, Dutch grower Rick van der Wercken brought a different proposition to Astana: chrysanthemums not only as a staple bouquet flower, but as a color-engineered product.
I'm from the Netherlands. We have a chrysanthemum greenhouse. We are the only chrysanthemum grower who is also specialized in coloring the flowers.
At his stand, one of the signature products was a single stem carrying multiple shades, including pink, blue, green and yellow. The idea, he said, was to create a bouquet element that already contains its own palette.
What you see is there are more colors in one stem. So you can make a very colorful sweet bouquet.
Like the Ecuadorian tinted roses, the chrysanthemums are colored through absorption rather than surface spraying. But unlike his counterpart, van der Wercken was careful not to reveal too much about the process.
We dye these chrysanthemums. How we do especially, we cannot tell you. It's a special technology.
The product, he noted, was introduced only last summer, and the company came to Kazakhstan in part to test local interest and show florists what could be done with it.
For all the novelty on display, van der Wercken also pointed to the enduring importance of classic commercial varieties. Among the most popular, he said, is Baltica White, valued by florists for the fullness it brings to arrangements.
For in the bouquets is the Baltica white. It's a very nice one to have in the bouquet. Make the bouquet more nice full.
He added that Kazakhstan is already part of the supply chain. His company sells flowers to Dutch firms operating through Floroland in the Netherlands, which then export them to Kazakhstan, where local importers distribute them to florists.
So that's the way our product is going to here.
Taken together, the flower business is becoming more technical, more segmented and more responsive to visual trends. A rose is no longer just a rose: it may be a decade-long breeding success, a coded genetic line, a custom-tinted export product or a response to a global shift in taste. The same is true for chrysanthemums, which are being pushed beyond their familiar role into something closer to floral design technology.
At the exhibition, beauty was still the first thing visitors saw. But behind it stood years of testing, climate strategy, logistics, product differentiation and a careful reading of what buyers now want from a stem.