Making Plant Trial Data Accessible through a Trialing Website

The horticultural industry releases hundreds of new plant varieties annually. These new releases often have improved garden performance or novel physical characteristics, such as flower color. However, not all plant introductions will thrive in all geographic regions and must be trialed regionally. Since 2001, trials of annual, and some perennial, bedding plants have been conducted at the Mississippi State University, Truck Crops Branch Experiment Station in Crystal Springs, MS. This region exposes plants to warm, humid weather with typical summer temperature highs of approximately 34 °C and 95% relative humidity. A goal of the trial gardens has been to evaluate plant performance, taking into consideration floral display, plant vigor, leaf health and disease or insect resistance. Not only is it important to evaluate plant material, but to increase the awareness of top performing cultivars, which generates regional consumer demand of winning varieties. To disseminate performance data, we developed an online plant trialing database (blogs.msucares.com/ornamentals). Improved website-design software have simplified this process and made it more accessible to a broader clientele. This website allows plant suppliers, producers, developers, landscapers, breeders, Master Gardeners, and homeowners to access plant performance results in real-time, and plant growth can be visualized over a season through progressive photographs. From this information, they can identify plant material that is suitable for their individual application. Growers can utilize this website to aid in plant selection to potentially boost sales. Plant breeders can use this data to identify weaknesses in specific plant material and guide future breeding work. This process of increasing demand for top performing plant material and guiding the selection of plant material for production should result in higher revenue for growers and increased chances for successful garden performance by the end user.