Workers in straw hats take to the field for pollination

Every morning for the past two months, dozens of workers wearing white coats and straw hats applied pollen to thousands of Chinese rose plants in a field at an institute on the Northeast Fourth Ring Road in Beijing.

From 9 am to 4:30 pm every day until June 1, horticulturists from the Beijing Institute of Landscape Architecture embarked on a series of tasks, including pollen collection, hybrid pollination and cultivation of new varieties.

Chao Yang, a senior researcher at the institute, who cultivated the first hybrid Chinese rose in 2005, has been involved in pollination work for nearly 20 years.

He said the aim of pollinating the flowers intensively for two months is to make use of the best period to complete cultivation of hybrid Chinese roses.

Chao, 46, recalled the first time he studied such hybrids in 1998, when he spent nearly 10 hours every day in the field to test pollen transmission among different varieties.

"I mixed and matched all the varieties of the Chinese rose that could be used at the time," he said. "Thousands of combinations were produced."

But it was difficult to select the right one that could withstand extreme weather conditions.

Narrowing the choice from a wide range, Chao finally cultivated the Red May variety from nearly 20,000 Chinese rose plants, a process that took about 10 years.

He said that during the same period in Western countries, such as Germany and France, researchers usually chose a hybrid variety from more than 50,000 plants.

"Long-term selection guarantees the variety can be grown easily in other environments," he said.

More than 1 million Red May flowers have been planted in Beijing and some cities in North China, including Erdos, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and Shenyang, Liaoning province.

Tens of thousands of Chinese rose plants cultivated domestically have been planted in the capital. Many of them are in Tongzhou district, where some departments of the Beijing Municipal Government have recently relocated.

Chao said planting hybrid varieties of the Chinese rose that are developed domestically means the flowers are cheaper.

"Previously, we had to pay dozens of euros to buy a single plant, and now each one only costs about 6 to 10 yuan (87 cents to $1.45)." It also means it is cheaper to maintain the flowers, he added.

The institution has stepped up efforts to increase public awareness of the Chinese rose.

China's first online database for the flower was established in 2017 by the institute, enabling searches for the names of varieties and related information.

A Chinese rose industry alliance will also be formed soon by the institute to further develop the business.