VERNON – Texas AgriLife Research scientists are trying to bring more beauty to the colder regions of the state by breeding winter-hardiness into a tropical ornamental plant, the angel's trumpet flower.
Dr Dariusz Malinowski, AgriLife Research plant physiologist and forage agronomist in Vernon, along with Dr Bill Pinchak and Shane Martin, both with AgriLife Research, and Steve Brown, program director for Texas Foundation Seed Service, began the project three years ago.
The goal of the project is to develop new cultivars with a range of flower colours, shapes and size, Malinowski said. The project has already resulted in about 25 breeding lines being sent to the Texas A and M University System Office of Technology Commercialisation. The next step is to offer the new lines commercially.
Several commercial nurseries have expressed interest in evaluating many of these lines this spring, Brown said. Evaluation will include commercial production and propagation to produce commercial quantities of angel's trumpets.
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